Question

The 3HS CEO has announced his intention to hire a Health Information Manager to implement processes and systems to support information governance. The board of directors has asked for a justification for this hire, citing that the system already employs a chief medical information officer and a chief information officer. The CEO has asked you for a summary that compares and contrasts these roles to help the board understand why they should authorize the hire, mandate one over the other, or develop a different structure.

Answer 1

The two designations namel;y Health information officer and chief information officer are closely related and associated with similar job roles and responsibilities to some extent but yet they are different in their performance and approach. Chief information officer has role to execute the decisions regarding the aspects such as purchase of infromation technology equipment and softwares and creation of new system moreover, CIO also has role to encourage, guide and direct the workforce in the given organization.

On the other hand Health Infromation Officer has role similar for purchasing IT or making decisions regarding technology use in practice, but moreover, HIO has role to care for patient data, records, quality, integrity and protection of the information and aquiring, protecting and analysing the digital health data.

Here, due to the nature of organization being health and social care the need for health information officer is must and the roles of HIO cannot be played by the chief information officer, as the HIO requires health care knowledge that the CIO may lack.