| | NOVEMBER 20189UTLOOK Healthcare Tech This has different roots and structure than the program management needed by informatics teams, yet has important similarities. One is the assumption that regulatory requirements are not going away. The other is its emphasis on documenting decision, interpretations of the applicable law, and archiving documentation for future audits. The main differentiator between a health system Regulatory Informatics manager compared to its pharmaceutical cousin is the client-facing aspect. Like many health systems, we support a number of different customers, including independent practitioners, practice managers, hospital quality, and compliance teams, etc. Each of these audiences requires role-specific guidance presented in a concise, trustworthy form. They are all busy and rely on the Regulatory Informatics lead to give them what they need to know, on their timelines. There are also government representatives or proxies that will need clarification of reports, mostly with regard to how patients were included or excluded from various measures.Core skills for this role seem to include the following:1. Translational communication: being able to take arcane information and synthesize it into written, visual, and spoken media depending on the needs of the audience. Good listening skills are often a must since the various constituents often use very different words in their requests.2. Project and program management skills, including the ability to decipher upcoming regulatory needs and use this to forecast capital and operating budgets, skills composition and hours needed for execution of any software configuration needed. 3. A strong technical background is critical. Regulatory Informatics is a discipline that demands an understanding of interoperability standards, including application programming interfaces (APIs), HL7, LOINC, SNOMED, etc. It typically requires technical coordination with state and federal agencies, testing of data file uploads, and cooperative arrangements with other health systems to test information exchanges. The most successful individuals I've recruited to such a role had application certification from our EHR vendor, Epic.Although legal and compliance training may be of benefit, it may also be a stumbling block, so as to avoid the temptation of absorbing too much interpretive power into this role. It is operational leaders who should maintain final decisional authority as to how to respond to and comply with regulatory demands of the EHR.The breadth and pace of regulatory change are not likely to go away, and interoperability, transparency and utilization management are integral to our ability to afford to deliver interventional and preventive health care to our aging yet tech-savvy population. We need capable individuals acting as aggregators and leaders of these efforts. We might as well give it a name. HTThe main differentiator between a health system Regulatory Informatics manager compared to its pharmaceutical cousin is the client-facing aspect
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