Perceived value and stakeholder experience of a dedicated allied health professions informatics role in a specialist cancer centre: a mixed-methods service evaluation survey
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Background
Dedicated allied health professions (AHP) informatics posts remain rare and largely unevaluated: one NHS trust in ten reports a formal AHP informatics lead.
Objectives
To evaluate stakeholder-perceived value and experience of a dedicated AHP Information Officer (AHPIO) role supporting an organisation-wide electronic health record (EHR), and to derive a working framework of the role’s practice.
Methods
Cross-sectional online survey within a registered service evaluation at a specialist cancer centre in England. A purposive census of 40 stakeholders (clinical and operational AHP staff, digital champions and EHR programme colleagues) rated six agreement items with four free-text questions. Analysis led with distributions, medians and Wilson intervals; inference was exploratory; free-text coding is fully audit-trailed.
Results
Twenty-seven stakeholders responded (68%). Five items sat at a ceiling (medians 4 to 5; agreement 95% to 100%); all 25 answering the overall item agreed the role adds value, 80% strongly. Data and reporting access was the outlier (median 3.0; 52% neutral or below; agreement 48%, 95% CI 28% to 68%), ranking below every other item (Friedman chi-squared 36.3, df 5, 20 complete cases; Holm-adjusted post-hoc comparisons, rank-biserial -0.73 to -1.00). Nine themes located value in brokerage and routing (18/26), concrete outcome accounts (16/26) and a clinician who understands AHP work (12/26).
Conclusions
Stakeholders located the role’s value in brokerage, clinical-digital translation, representation and outcome response, resting on a named trusted contact; self-service data is the part-built pillar and development priority. The framework and method offer a replicable template for evaluating AHP informatics roles.
