The Globalisation of Health Information Work

Globalisation in the health sector challenges conventions about the health workforce, such as where people in this workforce are trained and based geographically, how their work is conducted and regulated for safety and quality and consequently how health information flows. By reviewing scholarly literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, we can see some aspects of the globalisation of health information work, the people doing this work, the innovations they brought to this field of work and the challenges they faced. Three categories in this emergent workforce are described: distinct types of specialists, multidisciplinary coalitions of various kinds of workers, and non-professional Internet users. This review pinpoints some kinds of work that will tend to promote greater globalisation of the HIDDIN workforce and some types of health information challenges that globalisation cannot address without deliberate cooperation at the highest levels in the workforce.