A New Professional Definition in the Age of the Digital Hospital

As the concept of the digital hospital expands, professional definitions are changing with it. Today we no longer speak of "secretarial work" but of a data-driven health professional. This shift is not a matter of vocabulary; it follows from a genuine transformation in the work itself, because the volume, variety and legal weight of the data produced within a hospital are incomparable to what they were ten years ago. The content of the draft curricula proposed by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) for digital health technician programmes points clearly in the same direction. Artificial intelligence in healthcare, data security, HL7/FHIR integration, blockchain and big data analytics are no longer optional curiosities but are counted among the core skill areas. When a profession is rewritten through its curriculum, that is the most concrete signal of where it will stand in the future.

This point was particularly emphasised at the most recent National Medical Documentation and Secretarial Studies Workshop held at Ankara University. A medical secretary who knows systems such as KVKK (the Turkish data protection law), e-Nabız, SNOMED and ICD is no longer merely a person who prepares documents. She or he is a professional who ensures data governance, protects patient safety and manages digital processes. The accuracy of coding affects reimbursement, the integrity of the record affects clinical decisions, and access control affects patient privacy directly; the role is therefore no longer administrative support but part of the institution's risk management. Graduates who define themselves within this framework will both widen their employment prospects and strengthen the institutional weight of the profession. For that to happen, curricula, internship content and regulation all need to be looking in the same direction.

So where will this transformation lead graduates of Medical Documentation and Secretarial Studies in the years ahead? Four areas stand out:

• Health data management
• Digital archiving and information security
• Clinical informatics and system support
• AI-assisted record analysis

Which of these do you think will mature first, and which will settle at the centre of the professional definition? I would be glad to hear your views.