The system of higher education in Canada is the research object. The research aim is to identify characteristic features of the health informatics professional education development in Canadian higher education system and to offer scientific and methodological recommendations on applying constructive ideas of Canada’s experience into the Ukrainian educational environment.
The research methods: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, generalization, comparison and juxtaposition, logical, historical-genetic, descriptive method, conversation, questionnaire, interview.
For the first time the characteristic features of the health informatics professional education development in Canada have been identified (the influence of extrinsic factors – the centralized state policy on the healthcare informatization, the progress of information and communication technologies, human factor, etc. – on the quantity and quality dynamics of the health informatics professional education development; flexibility of health informatics educational programs’ content conditioned by postsecondary institutions’ academic autonomy and their orientation on actual social and economic needs; collaboration of postsecondary institutions with employers, non-government and professional organizations; professional associations’ participation in providing visions of developing the health informatics education); health informatics professional education as an educational research problem based on the theory and concepts of medicine, informatics and management has been introduced; the retrospective analysis of the health informatics professional education development in Canada has been performed (the extrinsic and intrinsic preconditions of the health informatics education rise have been determined, and the periodization of the health informatics professional education development in Canada has been proposed); the specifics of the health informatics professional education implementation in Canada at the beginning of the 21st century has been outlined (life-long professional development of specialists in health informatics, practice-orientation of their professional training, activity- and competency-based approaches to acquire core health informatics professional competencies, partnership and cooperation of the education sector with economic entities); and the scientific and methodological recommendations on applying constructive ideas of Canada’s experience into the Ukrainian university education have been offered.
The meaning of the notions ‘professional education’, ‘health informatics as an academic discipline’, ‘health informatics as a specialty’, ‘a health informatics professional’ have been clarified.
The ideas of higher education development on the principles of life-long professional development, competency-based approach to acquiring core professional skills, and cooperation of the higher education sector with potential employers have gained further development.
New facts, ideas and approaches, scientific literature on health informatics professional education have been introduced to scientific circulation. The ideas concerning the formation of professional and pedagogical competences of professional subject’s teachers involved in the professional training of specialists in Information, Library and Archival Studies gained further development.
