The development of a national census of the health information workforce: expert panel recommendations

Background. There is a need to develop a national census of the health information workforce to inform the planning and forecasting of the workforce and inform education and training needs. Yet, this raises a number of issues that need to be incorporated into the planning stage. This paper discusses the issues and recommendations for the development of a national health information workforce census and an Expert Panel's recommendations for how we should proceed. Methods. Nominated participants from Australia and New Zealand participated as Expert Panel members in focus groups to identify and discuss the issues. Recommendations were identified during the focus groups and documented for participant verification. These were then grouped into themes. Results and Discussion. The themes of the issues and considerations identified in the focus groups were: Aim of the census; Census advertisement; Census delivery; Participants; Longitudinal study; Types of data elements; Data development and standards; Data ownership, access and governance; Global census; Dissemination of results.