AHIMA Building a Global Health Workforce Council

AHIMA and the AHIMA Foundation, with the International Federation for Health Information Management Associations (IFHIMA) and other stakeholders, are convening a Global HealthWorkforce Council (GHWC) of 13 appointed members from 12 different countries that will work to advance a global workforce curricula standard.

The emphasis will be on ensuring the curricula standard is internationally applicable, flexible, and consistent, and provides a basis for the profession to be recognized by governments, higher education leaders, and employers in any country.

“The curricula standard will guide educational programming and workforce training, and contribute to an increase in the quality and number of highly trained professionals around the world with expertise in health information management, health informatics, and health information technology,” says AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, CAE, FACHE, FAHIMA.

A draft of the workforce curricula will be distributed for comment later this year. Country-level workgroups will bring stakeholders together to review and provide feedback on the global curricula standards and competencies.

“The standard will be developed through an open and transparent process that seeks input and consensus from country-level workgroups and stakeholders,” says William Rudman, PhD, RHIA, cochair of the GHWC, executive director of the AHIMA Foundation, and AHIMA vice president of education visioning. “We are thrilled that the GHWC appointed members are leaders from around the globe with accomplishments, experience, and influence in the fields of health care, education, governments, and associations with HIM, technology, and informatics expertise.”

Rudman’s cochair is Marci MacDonald, CHIM, who oversees three clinical information services departments for Halton Healthcare Services in Montreal. She is the president-elect for IFHIMA, which is working on implementing worldwide coding standards with the World Health Organization. She will assume the presidency at the 18th IFHIMA Congress in Tokyo in 2016.

The GHWC structure includes two chairs; six regional representatives—one from each IFHIMA/World Health Organization regions: Africa, Americas, Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, South East Asia, and Western Pacific; and five at-large representatives from Germany, Japan, India, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

In addition to the two chairs, Rudman and McDonald, the GHWC consists of the following members:

• Adio Rasaq Adetona, chief health information officer at the National Hospital Abuja in Nigeria;

• Lincoln A Moura, Jr., EE, MsC, DIC, PhD, president of the International Medical  Informatics Association and senior manager at Accenture in Brasilia/Sao Paulo;

• Hussein Ali Y AlBishi, CHIM, HIM & clinical coding specialist for Ministry of Health, Council of Health Services in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;

• Claudia Pagliari, BSc, PhD, FRCPE, program director at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland;

• Sabu Karakka Mandapam, M. App.Sc, PhD, associate dean and a professor of HIM School of Allied Health Sciences at Manipal University in Bangalore, India;

• Sue Walker, MHIthSc, GradDip (PubHlth), BAppSC (MRA), course coordinator for the Bachelor of Health Information Management at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia;

• Rachelle Blake, PA, MHA, CEO/president of Omni Micro Systems/Omni Med Solutions in Berlin;

• Angelika Haendel, MA, president of IFHIMA, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Berlin;

• Yukiko Yokobori, head of the distant training division of Japan Hospital Association in Tokyo;

• Fatima Abdulla Haydar Al Baloushi, Bachelor of Health Information Management, operations director at the COO Office of Al Ain Hospital in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates; and

• Francis Paul Kirubagaran, BSc, BMRSc, MHA, DCSc, head of medical records for Qatar Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha, Qatar.

The GHWC’s IT Advisor is Mary Cleary, Bachelor of Education, Master of Education, Higher Diploma in Information Technology, deputy chief executive of the Irish Computer Society/ICS Skills.

AHIMA’s work on this initiative is made possible by a grant from the US Department of Commerce.

Source: AHIMA