Top 5 IT Certifications in Healthcare

There are numerous certifications that specifically target IT for healthcare.

The Depression-area bank robber Willie Sutton is supposed to have been asked why he robbed banks, and his supposed answer is enshrined in our national folklore: “Because that’s where the money is.” Even though this exchange seems never to have occurred, going where the money is, or following the money to where it goes, remains a time-honored practice in choosing good targets for work.

By that metric, whether real or imaginary, Healthcare is clearly one place where the money is in the US—and somewhat less, but still potently high in the global economy as well. The National Coalition on Health Care, for example, estimates that health care spending as a percentage of GDP reached a high of 18.2 percent in June 2011. With GDP estimates for 2011 somewhat in excess of 15 trillion, that puts healthcare spending at around 2.7 trillion. Though estimates of healthcare spending on IT are a relatively miniscule 7-plus billion for 2011, that still pays for plenty of jobs in Healthcare IT.

That’s why it should come as no surprise at all that there are numerous certifications that specifically target IT for healthcare. Likewise, it’s reasonable to expect this number to grow, both in terms of sponsoring organizations and in the number of credentials on offer, in the years ahead. The size and growth of this market also explains the composition of the IT certification players, where we see a mix of industry organizations such as CompTIA that track gross economic and employment trends very carefully, along with a handful of healthcare-focused IT organizations, often with a mixture of healthcare and IT professionals at their helms.

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems. See here for all of Ed's Tom's IT Pro articles.

(Shutterstock cover image credit: Stethoscope on Laptop's Keyboard)