How to use the Health Informatics Career Framework (HICF)

Introduction

The HICF provides a structure for careers within Health Informatics (HI). It is currently populated with around 100 HI job roles. These are arranged on the framework in terms of career framework level and staff groups. It should be noted that the levels within the career framework do not relate to Agenda for Change levels, they are unique to the HICF and the wider Skills for Health Career Framework.

The HICF will help individuals to think through career opportunities and progression. It provides an indication of the competences, skills and qualifications that are required in particular jobs. It also shows potential career progression opportunities that individual’s may not have otherwise considered.

The HICF provides organisations with an overview of the types of jobs that are required to deliver a service. This will help with workforce planning and modelling. It will also help when considering the implications of service redesign.



The HICF and Individuals

The HICF can help individuals by:

Illustrating career opportunities

The HICF shows career opportunities within Health Informatics as a whole. Some of these career opportunities may be well known and traditional routes, others may be less traditional. The link with the National Occupational Standards (NOS) gives an indication of the types of transferable skills that individuals may have for a particular role. In this way they also help to illustrate the potential for less traditional routes through Health Informatics.

Aiding career planning

The HICF can help individuals to think through where they currently sit within Health Informatics and where they would like to progress to. This could be done by looking at the HICF and planning one or two routes through the HICF levels. Once these routes have been established the individual would need to consider the competences required to progress and seek ways and means of developing such competences within the workplace. This might be done through CPD and other approaches to training and development within the workplace.

Supporting movement in all directions

Individuals are inclined to think of career progression as being an ‘upward’ movement through the levels of the HICF. However, there are many cases where individuals move ‘sideways’ from one area into another, in order to progress further, or simply for a change of career or job satisfaction. The HICF demonstrates the potential for this kind of movement because it brings together related areas of work. As such it can help to broaden individuals understanding of where their skills are relevant across HI as a whole.

Providing a skills escalation concept based on competences

Underpinning the HICF are a set of National Occupational Standards (NOS) that have been brought together to show the competences required in each of the identified job roles. The referencing of these competences throughout the HICF provides an indication of how skills need to be developed in order to progress in HI. In other words, individuals can consider their current competences, as well as the types of competences they will need to further their careers.

Promoting the 'bigger picture' of Health Informatics

Individuals in the health sector may often view their own work within the context of one particular discipline or department. For those working within Health Informatics (HI), the HICF helps to reduce this perception and encourage individuals to see themselves as part of a wider HI workforce which is about the effective use of data, information, knowledge and technology to support and improve health and health care delivery. The HICF provides a ‘bigger picture’ of the critical work that is done within this area based on careers, job roles and competences.

To use the HICF for planning career progression you will need to:

  1. Look at some of the 'examples of career progression' provided in the HICF guidance
  2. Identify where your current job is best placed on the HICF
  3. Consider the type of traditional and non-traditional routes that may be open to you
  4. Identify one or two career pathways that you are interested in taking
  5. Review the content of the HI role that best describes the work that you do and consider the types of competences you have
  6. Review the content of the subsequent HI role(s) in the career pathway you have identified
  7. Consider how you can develop your own competences to meet the requirements of the career pathway you have identified
  8. Conduct some simple research to find out more about your potential career pathway – ask colleagues/members of staff, review relevant journals and newspapers, visit relevant websites
  9. Identify useful sources of information for making your career move and set yourself a workable timetable for your career progression
  10. Revise your CV to reflect the skills and competences that you have that are relevant to the career pathway you have identified
  11. Apply for relevant posts within the area of work you have identified for progression
  12. Keep an open mind to hybrid and related roles that may assist you in taking an alternative route to where you want to be.



The HICF and Organisations

The HICF can help organisations with:

Workforce planning

The HICF can support workforce planning by helping to identify the HI roles that are required across a department or organisation. It is important that strategic objectives are already in place in order to carry out such planning. A departmental or organisational chart can be drawn up based on the HICF and the strategic objectives. This will provide a clear indication of the types of job roles that are required, and the ways in which these individuals will support the strategic objectives.

The detailed content of the HI job roles can be used as the starting point for defining competence based job descriptions. It may be necessary to create new or hybrid roles and this can also be achieved using the HICF job roles as a starting point. Once this work has been completed the outputs will provide a clear indication of the types of jobs, competences and skills that are required across the team. The next stage will be to move into recruitment and selection of the right individuals for the various roles.

Workforce modelling

The application of the HICF to workforce modelling is similar to its application to workforce planning. However, in using the HICF for workforce modelling it is likely that existing workforce structures are in place and these need to be reviewed and modified for a variety of internal and/or external reasons. The HICF can be used to inform such modelling by showing the HI job roles that may be included and the competences that are required.

Workforce implications of service redesign

The HICF can support service re-design and modelling as discussed above. It can also help managers and planners to consider the implications of such change for the HI workforce. Alternative approaches to putting together teams of HI practitioners can be modelled. Such modelling can then be used to consider the implications of recruiting, developing and retaining individuals with the relevant skills at a local and national level.

Succession planning

The HICF can be used to inform managers of where their future workforce may come from as well as where individuals may progress in their chosen careers. Given the mobility of individuals in the HI workforce it is important to work through issues of succession planning. This can be done by reviewing the HI job roles that make up a team or service, and identifying where individuals may come from in the future to fill these positions. This is a more pro-active approach than simply advertising job vacancies and hoping the right person can be found for the job through conventional routes.

To use the HICF for service development you will need to:

  1. Identify the strategic objectives for the service
  2. Consider the types and number of HI job roles that will be required to achieve the strategic objectives
  3. Identify the HI job roles as far as possible from the HICF content
  4. If necessary, create new or hybrid HI job roles that support the achievement of strategic objectives
  5. Draw up an organisational chart that shows how the HI job roles fit together to achieve the strategic objectives
  6. Use the HI job roles you have identified to create relevant job descriptions
  7. Consider the implications of the organisational chart and HI job roles for recruiting, developing and retaining individuals, and make any necessary adaptations to the structure as a result
  8. Keep an open mind about ways in which individuals can be developed for future roles as well as what they are capable of at the present time.
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