Nearly Two Decades of Health Informatics Training: A Graduate Survey and a Proposed Digital Health Workforce Activation Index (D-WAI)

Background: Health Informatics (HI) education aims to prepare graduates to contribute to digitally enabled healthcare. However, HI programme evaluations have largely focused on employment and career outcomes, providing limited insight into graduates’ subsequent contributions to digital health technology. This study aimed to characterise the professional paths of graduates from nearly two decades of a Master’s in Health Informatics programme and explore their technological contributions using the proposed Digital Health Workforce Activation Index (D-WAI). Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted amongst 166 MHI graduates up to 2024; 65 responded (39.2%). Survey responses informed the D-WAI, comprising technological activation, role relevance, and current user base. Results: Respondents broadly reflected the graduate population, although representativeness tests had limited statistical power. Most reported a positive career impact (86.2%), attributed primarily to applied HI knowledge (81.5%) rather than improved employability (58.5%). However, translation into technological practice was less consistent: 53.8% had participated in health technology development, resulting in a D-WAI of 0.37. Among these graduates, role relevance was high (0.877), whereas current user base was moderate (0.494). Conclusions: Only half contributed to health technology development, despite strong role relevance among developers. The D-WAI may complement employment-based evaluation by providing an additional perspective on graduates’ technological contributions to digital health.