Biomedical Informatics: Job Market & Salary

If you have a diverging interest in computers, information technology, and the health care or medical field, you might be a good candidate for a career in biomedical informatics.

This career combines computer science, information science, and health care using tools that gather, store, and retrieve information in health care and biomedicine and medical research.

A person interested in a career in biomedical informatics must have strong analytical skills, as well as a strong interest in information and computer technology. Organizational skills and an interest in the health care or biomedical fields are also an asset for positions in biomedical informatics.

Biomedical informatics professionals will work with medical terminologies, information and computer systems within a medical setting, and communications systems. People interested in a career in biomedical informatics may be working in the nursing, clinical care, biomedical research, dentistry, pharmaceutical, or public health setting.

Compute your career in biomedical informatics
Biomedical informatics has been around since the 1950s in some form or another. It was formerly known as medical computing, medical computer science, computer medicine, medical electronic data processing, medical automatic data processing, medical information processing, medical information science, medical software engineering, or medical computer technology.

Today, a career in biomedical informatics is a highly specialized career program and requires core knowledge of biology, medicine, and computer science. It is usually offered as a master's degree or doctorate degree program level and most schools suggest a bachelor's degree in either biology, pre-medicine, or computer science before entering a program in biomedical informatics.

Students who enroll in a biomedical informatics program will learn how to conduct biomedical system modeling, perform machine learning and data mining, as well as complete analysis on experimental design and decision-making. Students in biomedical informatics will also study in-depth statistics and probability, algorithms and data structures, programming and data architecture, and artificial intelligence under the category of computer science. Finally, biomedical informatics students must learn biomedicine, with a concentration in biology and immunology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and laboratory methods. Many schools will also require studies in research law and ethics.

Students in the biomedical informatics program may typically concentrate in one of the following areas: clinical informatics, bioinformatics, dental informatics, health services research, biosurveillance/infectious disease informatics, or artificial intelligence.

Grow with a fast-growing career
A professional in biomedical informatics with an advanced degree and several years of experience can expect to earn about $140,000 at the top range of the salary range. The salary range depends on the size of the health care facility or hospital, as well as the level of management in which you are setting your sights.

Careers in biomedical informatics are some of the fastest-growing careers in the health care segments. Due to the fact that more and more data is being stored on computers, the growth is not expected to abate at all.

If you have the skill set necessary for a career in the exciting and fast growing world of biomedical informatics, find an educational program or a school today near you and get started in a new and rewarding career in the health care field.

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