Establishing the Centrality of Health Informatics in Physical Therapist Education: If Not Now, When?

Abstract

Background and Purpose. Physical therapists increasingly struggle to manage the vast amount of information required to make sound clinical decisions. This struggle occurs, in part, because of a lack of knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the potent tool of information technology for systematically processing data and supporting information and knowledge. The field of health informatics has emerged as an interdisciplinary science that evaluates how health information and knowledge can be effectively used for clinical decision making. Health care leaders have recognized informatics competencies as essential in other health care education programs, especially as a foundation for evidence-based practice. The purpose of this article is to describe the current state of health informatics in physical therapist education, to summarize the rationale for incorporating informatics in physical therapist education, and to propose a framework for incorporating this content into physical therapist education. Position and Rationale. Physical therapist education should identify and incorporate health informatics as a foundational domain. Failing to prepare clinicians with technology competencies will hamper progress towards our profession's goals of fully availing ourselves of technologies that can facilitate more effective and efficient care. Because adopting health information technology is a top national priority, we must move quickly to ensure that physical therapists can continue to thrive in the emerging electronic infrastructure. Discussion and Conclusion. Although some concepts of health informatics are incorporated in physical therapist education program's core documents, this inclusion was not based on the perspective of health informatics as an applied scientific discipline. In conjunction with the APTA's concerted effort to adopt interoperable electronic health record systems, the profession should develop a strategic plan for ensuring that physical therapists have the knowledge and skills to use the tools of informatics effectively. We present specific recommendations to help strengthen the centrality of informatics within physical therapist education, such as including health informatics as a foundational domain and fully developing the set of core informatics competencies for physical therapy. We encourage the academic community to engage in activities and dialog that clarify the role of informatics in physical therapist education. Key Words. Health informatics, Physical therapist education, Informatics competencies. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Health professionals, including physical therapists, increasingly struggle to manage the vast amount of information required to make sound clinical decisions, in part because they often lack the knowledge and skills to effectively use the potent tool of information technology for systematically processing data and supporting information and knowledge management.1 The field of health informatics has emerged as an interdisciplinary science that evaluates how health information and knowledge can be effectively used for clinical decision-making. With timely access to a patient's complete health record and computerized systems that make patient-specific recommendations based on best evidence, physical therapists are likely to make better clinical decisions. Few of these systems have been evaluated within physical therapy,2 but systemic reviews from the broader health informatics field have convincingly demonstrated that computers can improve quality by increasing providers' adherence to guideline-based care, improving surveillance and monitoring in disease management, and decreasing medication errors.3'4 As just one example from many, a computerized reminder for contact isolation for patients known to be colonized or infected with resistant organisms improved the isolation rate from 33% to 89% while simultaneously decreasing the median time for contact isolation orders to be written from 16. …