Every modern healthcare system runs on data — patient records, lab results, treatment histories — and the ability to collect, manage and act on that data well is now as important as clinical skill itself. That intersection of healthcare, technology and information management is what health informatics covers, and the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy built this course to help professionals master it.

Participants get a practical, comprehensive tour of the field: the systems healthcare organisations rely on, the principles behind sound data management, the analytics that turn raw numbers into better patient outcomes, and the regulatory landscape that shapes it all.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the concept of health informatics and how it applies across healthcare delivery.
• Work confidently with health information systems, data management principles and healthcare analytics.
• Navigate the regulatory and ethical considerations that shape health informatics practice.
• Identify emerging trends and where the field is heading next.

Who should attend?

• Healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, pharmacists and others) alongside health information management professionals.
• IT professionals interested in healthcare, and students pursuing degrees in healthcare administration or informatics.

Module 1: The Big Picture — Why Health Informatics Matters

• Defining health informatics: scope, importance and historical evolution.
• Core concepts: data, information and knowledge in a health informatics context.
• Electronic health records (EHRs), their components, and how health information systems (HIS) differ from health informatics itself.

Module 2: The Technology Powering the Field

• An overview of health information technology (HIT), its tools and software.
• Telemedicine and mobile health (mHealth) in practice.
• Types of health information systems — EHR, Health Information Exchange (HIE) and others — including their design, implementation and integration with clinical and administrative systems.
• Health data standards and interoperability between systems.

Module 3: Managing and Protecting Health Data

• Principles of collecting, storing and retrieving health data, including SQL and NoSQL storage solutions.
• Data governance, quality assurance and data integrity.
• Privacy, security and confidentiality of health information.

Module 4: Turning Data Into Better Decisions

• Introduction to healthcare data analytics — descriptive, predictive and prescriptive.
• Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) and evidence-based medicine.
• Data mining, machine learning, predictive analytics and business intelligence tools in healthcare.
• Telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and informatics in public and population health management.

Module 5: Policy, Regulation and What Comes Next

• Healthcare regulations and compliance requirements, including HIPAA and GDPR.
• Ethical considerations in health informatics research and practice.
• Current trends — big data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) — and future directions and challenges for the field.