Mining Health Informatics Job Advertisements: Insights for Higher Education Programs and Job Seekers

Abstract

This paper used web scraping and data mining to analyze 831 health informatics job advertisements on indeed.com. Results showed that 87% of jobs explicitly required a college degree in a related field, 41% of jobs preferred a graduate degree, while 29% preferred or required professional certification. The analysis showed that preferred skills were analytics problem solving, communication skills, oral communication, interpersonal skills, project management, statistics, and critical thinking. The analysis also showed that college degrees, certifications, and the above-mentioned skill set are in high demand for working in the field of health informatics, especially in states with large populations and strong economies. Our results inform curriculum development of health informatics programs in higher education, which helps map knowledge units across the curricula to bridge the skills gap and meet employers’ expectations. At the same time, the results help job seekers familiarize themselves with what employers seek in a successful candidate.