Health Information Management Journal

Developments in information technology will drive the change in records management; however, it should be the health information managers who drive the information management change. The role of health information management will be challenged to use information technology to broker a range of requests for information from a variety of users, including health consumers. The purposes of this paper are to conceptualise the role of health information management in the context of a technologically driven and managed health care environment, and to demonstrate how this framework has been used to review and develop the undergraduate program in health information management at the Queensland University of Technology.

The first conference was held in Adelaide in August 2000. The conference was an initiative of the National Health Information Management Advisory Council (NHIMAC). NHIMAC was established in 1998 by the Australian Health Ministers to advise on options to promote a nationally uniform approach to more effective information management in the health sector. The second conference was held in Brisbane in March 2003, and this paper provides an overview of the key issues addressed there.