Top Health Informatics Salary

As of early 2014, most if not all medical facilities, especially those who receive Medicare and Medicaid funds, are required to have an electronic filing system of medical records across a wide range of settings. In order to maintain and meet these goals, there has been a rise in need for people who can manage, plan, and organize the science behind healthcare, information technology, and business. Also known as Health Informatics, these jobs are projected to have a 21% increase up to 2020. Below is a list of some of the top paying Health Informatics jobs and their tentative salaries:

Nursing Informatics ($40,000-$85,000)

Efficient and effective patient care plans are a necessity for doctor’s offices, care centers, and hospitals. Nurses are often charged with creating them and seeing that they are carried out, and because of their expertise, a number of health care places are actively searching for nurses who are interested in technology.

Those who work in the nursing health informatics train other nurses on changing and current record keeping protocol, work towards reducing redundancy, and reduce inaccuracy. They also analyze and address the logistics of technology in direct patient care. Nursing informatics also manage and provide the healthcare data to nurses, patients, doctors, and other healthcare providers.

Bioinformatics ($50,000-$80,000)

Understanding and knowing the ins and outs of biology, math, and computer science as well as being able to analyze and interpret data is key for bioinformatics. Working in bioinformatics requires at least a college-level proficiency with biology and math, especially biostatistics, and at least an undergraduate degree in biology, computer science, or biotechnology.

Those who work in bioinformatics use computers to gather, store, integrate, and analyze biological and genetic data that can then be used to discover and develop gene based drugs. A key thing to remember for bioinformatics, as well as any of the health informatics professions, is that the technology is going to be constantly changing and improving so staying up to date and current on technologies is a must.

Health IT ($50,000-$100,000)

Health information technology (Health IT) involves many of the technologies when it comes to storing, sharing, and analyzing patient health information. This includes electronic health records (EHRs), personal health records (PHRs), electronic dental records (EDRs), secure messaging, online communities, and ePrescribing which allows doctors to communicate to pharmacies. Luckily, the market of health IT jobs is expected to grow annually at 7.4%, so there will be plenty of opportunities for jobs in the future. Also, these jobs are available everywhere, and are especially big in the East Coast, the South, and in California.

Health Informatics Director ($80,000-$120,000)

The executive level of the informatics branch combines a wide swath of technology as well as ‘people skills’ that are aimed at organizing and integrating data from different divisions. They will be in charge of, especially in hospitals, of making sure that data is readily available in different departments and that the flow of data goes well. Most directors will need to hold a master’s degree and years of experience.

Health informatics directors are usually in charge of training teams on new technology and recording and analyzing tech issues and challenges and fixing these problems. Directors will also need to meet regularly with stakeholders as well as physicians, nurses, and pharmacy staff to roll out technology protocol changes and keep them regularly updated.

Of course, other high paying jobs in health informatics are also available if none of these sound appealing and there is a wide range of jobs in what they cover. Some other job areas include medical informatics, public health informatics, consumer informatics, and pharmaceutical informatics. With a growing need for skilled, versatile, and well-trained tech specialists the time is ripe to get into the health informatics profession.