Computationally Modelling Current and Predicting Future Workforce of Informaticians in NHS Wales

There are around 3000 informaticians working within NHS Wales, who provide a range of services for the whole of Wales, including clinical informatics, clinical coding, medical records, information communications technology and knowledge management. The NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS) operates on a `once for Wales' policy which seeks to create standardised health service systems across Wales. NWIS needs to be able to make accurate predictions for the future informatics workforce in order to provide the best service. This workforce is unique in that the informaticians are spread across different organisations, so this project requires modelling a distributed workforce without modelling each organisation a worker is situated in. Even though workforce modelling is not a new topic and there has been a lot of work already done, each workforce is unique and therefore modelling it brings it's own challenges and chances to contribute something new. Due to the complexities of predicting any workforce it is not possible to make fully educated decisions for future planning. So, an estimation based on assumptions is the best solution that could be hoped for. This project will create a model which will reduce the number of assumptions made and answer key questions relating to the workforce. It will enable the informatics workforce leaders to make better educated decisions when designing their workforce plans. This in turn will lead to a better prepared workforce that has predicted new training needs, and is ready to implement this training as soon as the need arises.