{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.031058716844253004, 'fraction_numerical': 0.019723418725912493, 'mean_word_length': 5.035567715458276, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Research in health information management: An expanding field of enquiry

I am privileged to accept the appointment of editor of the Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ) and to have the opportunity to promote health information management research and publication through the flagship journal of the Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA). I bring to the role 18 years of experience in general practice research, undertaken through the national Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health program operated by the University of Sydney’s Family Medicine Research Centre. It was my privilege to work with that amazing team of dedicated researchers and to observe the changes occurring in general practice over nearly two decades. During that time, my colleagues and I witnessed the transformation of health data management as general practitioners (GPs) transferred from paper patient records to electronic versions. In 2016, over 96% of Australian GPs were using a computer for some of their clinical activity – 70% were completely paperless, while 25% were using a hybrid of paper and electronic records (Britt et al., 2016). Given GPs are the “gatekeeper” to Medicare funded access to secondary and tertiary health services in Australia, it is likely that GPs will undertake the role of curating the “My Health Record” for patients as it is rolled out across the country. In commencing the role of editor of HIMJ, I am aware of the shoes I attempt to fill. Over the past 6 years, Jennie Shepheard’s contribution as an editor has been extraordinary in “shepherding” the journal though some very significant changes. She has laid the foundation for the continued development of HIMJ as a high-quality conduit for dissemination of strong academic research in the field of health information management. This issue of HIMJ is the final for 2017 and marks the achievement of two complete volumes published via the SAGE platform. As HIMJ is now a SAGE publication, Jennie has also overseen the “physical” separation of HIMJ from HIMAA’s professional practice publication, HIM-Interchange (HIM-I), still published by HIMAAA. It is to her credit that both journals have continued to thrive, with contributions having reached the stage where HIM-I now requires its own editorial and publication team, and I congratulate Joanne Fitzgerald and wish her every success as incoming editor of HIM-I. Publishing through SAGE has increased the international profile of HIMJ as demonstrated by the increasing number and provenance of submitted papers. In 2016, 88 research papers were submitted from 25 different nations. In testament to HIMJ’s standard of academic excellence, only 8.0% of these papers were published. These incorporated a great range of topics from an eclectic group of researchers, including many from developing nations. It is wonderful to see the breadth of work being produced in Australia while also providing a medium to demonstrate the quality of research being undertaken by our international contemporaries. What is evident from the papers published in recent years is that the issues affecting health information management are broad and common internationally. The proliferation of articles based on extracted health information that is appearing in other publications underscores the escalating significance of these data across the health sector. Data quality is of increasing importance, not only to patient care, but because of the growing reliance on patient record data for research (Hersh et al., 2013) and health service funding (Bailie et al., 2015). In recent HIMJ issues, various aspects of data quality were investigated in numerous settings including primary care (Barnett et al., 2016), aged care (Davis et al., 2016), cancer registries (Fararouei et al., 2016), outpatient clinics (Munyisia et al., 2016), hospitals (Jylha et al., 2016; Monto et al., 2016), and a serology laboratory (Vecellio et al., 2015). The impact of data quality on activity-based funding is critical and a number of papers presented issues related to this (Munyisia et al., 2016; Reid et al., 2017). The importance of patient access to their health information through patient/personal health records was explored (Hanna et al., 2017; Hemsley et al., 2016; Kang et al., 2015). Information technology and web-based applications are being used increasingly by patients of all ages