Redefining the health information management scholar role.

The demand for healthcare data and information has grown exponentially with increased efforts to improve quality of care, decrease healthcare costs, and implement more efficient and productive means of conducting medical research. The roles and responsibilities of health information management (HIM) professionals have expanded to meet the industry’s demand and reliance on health information technology (HIT) to process and manage the data and information. As the industry transitions from paper to electronic health record (EHR) systems, it is important for HIM practitioners to expand the profession’s growing body of knowledge through research and scholarship. ―HIM practitioners need the results of research to support their efforts to reinvent and reposition HIM functions and practices...and to update or create new [academic program] curricula.‖ 1 HIM practitioners also have an ethical duty to ―advance HIM knowledge and practice through continuing education, research, publications, and presentations.‖ 2