Job Profiles of Biomedical Informatics Graduates

Abstract

SummaryBackground: Biomedical informatics programs exist in many countries. Some analyses of the skills needed and of recommendations for curricular content for such programs have been published. However, not much is known of the job profiles and job careers of their graduates. Objectives: To analyse the job profiles and job careers of 175 graduates of the biomedical informatics bachelor and master program of the Tyrolean university UMIT. Methods: Survey of all biomedical informatics students who graduated from UMIT between 2001 and 2013. Results: Information is available for 170 graduates. Eight percent of graduates are male. Of all bachelor graduates, 86% started a master program. Of all master graduates, 36% started a PhD. The job profiles are quite diverse: at the time of the survey, 35% of all master graduates worked in the health IT industry, 24% at research institutions, 9% in hospitals, 9% as medical doctors, 17% as informaticians outside the health care sector, and 6% in other areas. Overall, 68% of the graduates are working as biomedical informaticians. The results of the survey indicate a good job situation for the graduates. Conclusions:The job opportunities for biomedical informaticians who graduated with a bachelor or master degree from UMIT seem to be quite good. The majority of graduates are working as biomedical informaticians. A larger number of comparable surveys of graduates from other biomedical informatics programs would help to enhance our knowledge about careers in biomedical informatics.

A Survey of the Job Profiles of Biomedical Informatics Graduates

“…Similar studies conducted in other countries have also demonstrated this situation regardless of the pursued degree. This positive circumstance has been earlier reported by [5][6][7] and more recently, by [4].…”

“…Interestingly, approximately one out of ten graduates work in hospitals, as also veri fied in Austria by [4]. Defying common sense and the curriculum specifications designed to meet the needs of hospitals (and health-related work environments), student feedback has shown that nowadays attractive job opportunities are currently limited.…”

“…A comparison between USP BMI gradu ates and graduates surveyed in two other related papers [4,5] revealed that the proportion of graduates working in BMI and non-BMI fields in Austria, Germany, and Brazil is as follows:…”

“…Although it is essential to profile the incoming students, analyzing the job profile of the BMI graduates helps to understand how important the subjects taught during the course are to the employment market. This analysis also helps to pinpoint which subjects or disciplines deserve more lecture hours, as recently addressed by Ammenwerth & Hackl [4]. In this last reference, the authors also commented about a few other BMI surveys besides their own, most of which focused on the graduate level.…”

On Teaching International Courses on Health Information Systems

“…The International Medical Informatics Associations (IMIA) has raised this importance, when IMIA’s General Assembly adopted recommendations on health and medical education in 1999 [14], and confirmed the relevance for educating informatics students about HIS in its first revision in 2009 [15]. Furthermore, graduates of educational programs in medical informatics frequently work in the area of health information systems [16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. …”