Library and information science education for the new medical environment and the age of integrated information

Library Trends, Fall, 1993 by Ellen Gay Detlefsen

The issue of career focus in medical informatics led Greenes and Shortliffe (1990) to list some expected career paths in medical informatics; these researchers saw informatics professionals 1. in academic research & development, and educational support

positions; 2. in clinical administrative and educational management; 3. as operational service managers; 4. as hospital chief information officers; and 5. in corporate research and development.

The 1992 Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care featured two sessions which were also centered on the career concerns of those in medical informatics. There was an evening workshop on "Certification in Medical Informatics and Clinical Informatics as a Medical Specialty," which proposed two distinct and parallel initiatives: one for board-certified physicians leading to a subspecialty qualification recognized (at some point in the future) by the American Board of Medical Specialties, and a certificate in medical informatics, open to all AMIA members regardless of professional background. A second panel was held to discuss "Outreach [and] New Collaborative Roles for Health Professional Librarians," again focused on the emerging "collaborative efforts to foster and facilitate the use of information technology with the ultimate goal of improving health care delivery."(19) These efforts suggest that the additional career path of a health information professional or biomedical librarian should now be added to the list developed by Greenes and Shortliffe in 1990.

REFORMATION OF MEDICAL LIBRARY EDUCATION

In response to these efforts to expand the field of medical informatics and to reform medical education, those LIS programs that seek to be leaders in the education of new information professionals for biomedical settings must expand and change their own agendas. Care needs to be taken now to see that LIS programs at both the master's and doctoral level, as well as in the continuing education arena, reflect an awareness of the changes taking place in medical education and in the emergence of medical informatics as a discipline and as a professional field.

The push for added emphases in LIS education was strengthened with the 1992 publication of the Platform for Change: The Educational Policy Statement of the Medical Library Association (Medical Library Association, 1992).(20) This document stresses a baseline set of seven areas of knowledge and skills and individual responsibility for the "continuum of learning." In addition, both general recommendations and specific charges for "library and information science education" were made. Table 6 lists the essential "health information science knowledge and skills," and Table 7 outlines the MLA's five recommendations which most directly impact LIS education.

[TABULAR DATA 6 & 7 OMITTED]

To respond to these imperatives, LIS programs must take a number of steps. Individuals with a specific interest in, and experience with, health sciences information should be recruited for full-time tenure-stream and tenured positions in LIS schools, and these faculty members should then seek joint appointments and collaborative relationships with medical researchers and faculties. Only full-time LIS faculty members can assume the advocacy and advising roles that are crucial for a specialization in an LIS curriculum. Researchers and teachers from medical education should also be invited to join LIS programs as adjunct faculty and then participate fully in LIS program planning. Interdisciplinarity must be a hallmark of LIS education for the medical environment (Hoke, 1993).