Table 1.

Health Informatics and Information Management Competency Crosswalk

Knowledge Domain	Curricular Concepts	CAHIIM MS HIM	CAHIIM MS HI	AMIA	IMIA	Clinical Informatics Core
Information and Computer Sciences
	Computer Science: Algorithms, programming, software engineering, data structures, databases, data types, SQL, NoSQL, software development lifecycle, machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, simulation and modelling	X	X	X	X	X
	Information Science: Information architecture, systems analysis, system design, disaster recovery, business analysis, system documentation, requirements analysis, system selection; also information retrieval, information management, information seeking	X	X	X	X	X
	Health Information Technologies: information systems used in health care; telemedicine and e-health, patient portals, devices	X	X	X	X	X
	Health Data Representation and Stewardship: Nature of health data, legal medical record, the electronic health record, data representation, data quality, data stewardship, secondary use, data integrity, minimum data sets	X	X	X	X
	Health Data Standards: general principles of ontologies and standard nomenclature; various coding systems used in health care; management of local vocabularies; mapping to standard vocabularies	X	X	X	X	X
	Networking and Interoperability: System integration; health information exchange; syntax; HL7, clinical messaging, enterprise system	X	X	X	X	X
	Clinical Decision Support: history, knowledge management, medical knowledge; computerization of clinical guidelines	X	X	X	X	X
	Information Security: technical security, encryption, practices; HIPAA; privacy; security; confidentiality; protected health information	X	X	X	X	X
Health Services
	Health Services and Administration	A	A	A	X	X
	Public/Population Health, Epidemiology		X	X		X
	Health Policy (e.g., HITECH, HIPAA)	X		X	X	X
	Evidence-based medicine & practice, including translation of research into practice	X		X	X	X
	Health Services Research, including quality, safety, and patient-centered outcomes	X	X	X	X	X
	Biomedical and Clinical Sciences	A	X	A	X	A
Social, Behavioral, and Organizational Sciences
	Leadership, including change management, engaging stakeholders	X	X	X	X	X
	Systems thinking and approaches	X	X	X		X
	Organizational Management, including org governance, human resources, finance & budget, org policies, org procedures, strategic planning	X	X	X	X	X
	IT System Governance and Management, including IT policies, operations	X		X		X
	Project Management, including business analysis, workflow or sys redesign	X	X	X		X
	Performance metrics, including benchmarking, productivity standards, report cards	X
	Ethics, including Privacy, Confidentiality, and IRES (ethics in research)	X	X	X	X	X
	Public Policy, including laws, regulations, regulatory compliance, advocacy	X	X	X		X
Statistics and Data Science
	Foundations: Discrete mathematics, probability, number theory	A	A	X	X	A
	Statistics: Basic statistics, advanced statistics, biostatistics	X		A		A
	Analysis: Design and execution of analysis plans, quality assurance	X		X		X
	Interpretation and communication of analytical findings to stakeholders, including reports, scientific publication, and presentations	X		X		A
Human Factors, Ergonomics and Cognitive Sciences
	Medical decision making: Principles of human cognition and decision-making, especially for clinicians and allied health professionals	X	X	X	X	X
	Design: Human-centered design, prototyping, human factors & ergonomics principles	X	X	X		X
	Human-computer interaction: usability, information needs assessment, software and device selection based on human factors	X	X	X	X	X
	Socio-technical and socio-organizational principles, including workflow assessment, workflow optimization, process modeling and systems redesign		X	X	X	X
Education and Training
	Educate the public and consumers on privacy, security, access to and maintenance of personal health information, including laws and policies governing data use	X			X
	Design, execute and/or manage enterprise-wide compliance training programs on topics including regulatory, reimbursement, and legal issues	X
	Design, execute and/or manage enterprise-wide training programs on information systems to be deployed or in use within the enterprise	X
	Promote lifelong learning for self and others	X		X		X

A = assumed prior knowledge through diploma, college or undergraduate degree program (or clinical experience)

X = competency IS a required component (yes or no – does not indicate depth or breadth of knowledge)

CAHIIM – MS HIM = Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education – Curriculum Requirements for Health Information Management (HIM) Programmatic Accreditation (Graduate Education)

CAHIIM – MS HI = Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education – Curriculum Requirements for Health Informatics Programmatic Accreditation (Graduate Education)

AMIA = Kulikowski CA, Shortliffe EH, Currie LM, Elkin PL, Hunter LE, Johnson TR, et al. AMIA Board white paper: definition of biomedical informatics and specification of core competencies for graduate education in the discipline. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2012;19(6):931–8.

IMIA = International Medical Informatics Association- Mantas J, Ammenwerth E, Demiris G, Hasman A, Haux R, Hersh W, et al. Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on Education in Biomedical and Health Informatics. First Revision. Methods of information in medicine. 2010; 49(2):105–120.

Clinical Informatics = Gardner RM, Overhage JM, Steen EB, Munger BS, Holmes JH, Williamson JJ, et al. Core content for the subspecialty of clinical informatics. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009; 16(2): 153–157.

Competencies described by the major accrediting bodies or HI/HIM professional associations were reviewed and compared and collated into six distinct knowledge domains.