Healthcare data scientist qualifications, skills, and job focus: a content analysis of job postings

Abstract

Objective Growth in big data and its potential impact on the healthcare industry have driven the need for more data scientists. In health care, big data can be used to improve care quality, increase efficiency, lower costs, and drive innovation. Given the importance of data scientists to U.S. healthcare organizations, I examine the qualifications and skills these organizations require for data scientist positions and the specific focus of their work. Materials and Methods A content analysis of U.S. healthcare data scientist job postings was conducted using an inductive approach to capture and categorize core information about each posting and a deductive approach to evaluate skills required. Profiles were generated for 4 job focus areas. Results There is a spectrum of healthcare data scientist positions that varies based on hiring organization type, job level, and job focus area. The focus of these positions ranged from performance improvement to innovation and product development with some positions more broadly defined to address organizational-specific needs. Based on the job posting sample, the primary skills these organizations required were statistics, R, machine learning, storytelling, and Python. Conclusions These results may be useful to organizations as they deepen our understanding of the qualifications and skills required for data scientist positions and may aid organizations in identifying skills and knowledge areas that have been overlooked in position postings.

Big Data Analytics Capabilities and Eco-Innovation: A Study of Energy Companies

“…Skilled personnel such as data scientists could support decision-making of firms through generating new understandings from data streams [116]. Hence, harnessing the human capital to leverage value from big data can be instrumental towards eco-innovation related activities such as product development or process refinement [117]. Human capital can also be vital in generating more value from big data through visualization and analysis at critical levels such as product/process design [118].…”

Sixty years of research on technology and human resource management: Looking back and looking forward

“…A data scientist is considered one of the most attractive jobs of the 21st century, and the demand for data scientists has been soaring in recent years (Davenport & Patil, 2012). However, much is unknown about this emerging group of new technology workers (Meyer, 2019). The emergence of data scientists could be analogous to previous upsurges in new technology workers, such as research scientists in the 1960s and IT professionals in the 1980s.…”

How hospitals in mainland China responded to the outbreak of COVID-19 using information technology–enabled services: An analysis of hospital news webpages

“…As recommended by Weber, 21 content analysis can be used to identify and describe meaningful classifications, reveal patterns, and therefore gain new insights through a systematic analysis of a volume of written communication. 22 Our content analysis included 3 phases: preparation, organization, and reporting. 22,23 In the preparation phase, we collected all the IT utilization-related news webpages published in the top 50 hospitals in mainland China 24 between January 22 and February 21, 2020 (Supplementary Appendix A).…”