Health Information Management

Employment choices in this field are expanding, and the rapidly changing health care environment is providing new opportunities for this profession largely due to the critical importance of accurate, precise and timely patient information.

What is Health Information Management?

General Information: Professional Placements

Coursework is complemented by fieldwork undertaken in a variety of health facilities such as community health centres and hospitals. Some students chose to travel interstate or overseas for broader fieldwork experience.

Further Study

Upon completion of a postgraduate diploma there are a number of study options that students can undertake. Students pursuing studies by higher degree may apply for scholarships. Information about Australian and International student scholarships, and closing dates, can be found on the Curtin Scholarship website.

Courses offered

Undergraduate Courses

§  Bachelor of Science - Health Sciences: Health Information Management Major 

§  Bachelor of Science (Health Sciences) (Honours) 

Master & Doctoral Programs

§  Master of Health Administration

§  Master of Health Information Management

§  Master of Philosophy

§  Master of Public Health 

§  Doctor of International Health / Doctor of Public Health

What is a health information organization?

The process of HIE requires a formal degree of oversight to facilitate and govern the exchange of health-related information between organizations. The first incarnation of this oversight function to emerge from the marketplace was the regional health information organization or RHIO. But as different business and technological arrangements came into being to foster exchange of health-related information, they did not fit well into the confines of a RHIO as it was becoming defined by such characteristics as geography and community-based governance. To effectively account for and describe the range of possible organizational types, a term to uniquely define oversight organizations is necessary. The term HIO affords an opportunity to be as general or specific as desired when referring to the arrangements governing the exchange of health information and identifying the nature of participation. As one result of this approach, the term RHIO can be placed in its proper perspective and defined distinctly. Thus a RHIO is positioned in this report as a type of HIO with a well-defined purpose and participation, one among many other potential types of HIOs with different purposes, participants and contractual agreements. Examples of other types of HIOs include health data banks, specialty care organizations, and integrated delivery networks (IDNs). Other types of HIO organizations can, if desired, differentiate themselves by substituting another defining word and acronymic letter ahead of the root term HIO.

Health Information Organization (HIO) An organization that oversees and governs the exchange of health-related information among organizations according to nationally recognized standards.

Understanding an HIO

The purpose of an HIO is to perform oversight and governance functions for HIE. Oversight functions of an HIO may include, but are not limited to:

•  Facilitation of operations associated with the movement of information—assuring that hardware, software, protocols, standards, stakeholders and services supporting the interoperable exchange of health-related information are available and engaged.

•  Fiduciary responsibility for the assets, accountability for abiding by regulatory requirements for handling personal health information, and adherence to standards enabling interoperable information exchange.

•    Maintenance of information sharing agreements, business associate agreements, or other such contracts. 
•  Adoption and maintenance of standards ensuring interoperability while protecting the confidentiality and security of the information. 
•  Making decisions regarding certain types of information for which no nationally recognized interoperability standard is available.
•   Developing and sharing best practices among organizations. 

Although an HIO is identified as the organization overseeing HIE among disparate entities, HIE can also be implemented within a single organizational structure--for example, an integrated health care delivery system that converts from a proprietary, non-standard information exchange architecture to HIE architecture using nationally recognized standards. The health car benefits by being in a position to exchange health-related information with other HIOs as they develop and mature system.

Personal Health Record (PHR)

An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual understanding a PHRU

The most salient feature of the PHR, and the one that distinguishes it from the EMR and EHR, is that the information it contains is under the control of the individual. The concise definition above names the individual as the source of control, but that leaves room for others acting in the individual’s interest—their agent or agents—to have control over access to the PHR. An agent may be expressly designated by the individual but not in all cases; examples of an agent acting for an individual include parents acting for children, or, in the later stages of life, children acting for parents.

Exercising control. The individual is distinctively the guardian of information stored or accessible within a PHR. Similar to the role of a librarian, a person managing a PHR decides what volumes of information to include, how they are maintained and ordered, and who can read them or “check them out.” Standards and policy will need to determine if and how individuals can delete or modify information in a PHR that originated from an EHR and how these modifications are communicated to other providers with whom the data in the PHR are shared.

Portability. Having control also means that an individual’s PHR can exist independently of the entity that sponsors it—the PHR is portable. This requirement for portability excludes models in which sponsors such as health insurers or health care providers give individuals access to health-related information that is dependent on the individual remaining with that sponsor.