1) What is medical informatics?
2) Where can I train in medical informatics?
3) What do people trained in Medical Informatics do?
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1) What is medical informatics?
Simplistic definition: Computer applications in medical care
Complicated definition:
Biomedical Informatics is an emerging discipline that has been defined as the study, invention, and implementation of structures and
algorithms to improve communication, understanding and management of medical information. The end objective of biomedical informatics is
the coalescing of data, knowledge, and the tools necessary to apply that data and knowledge in the decision-making process, at the time
and place that a decision needs to be made. The focus on the structures and algorithms necessary to manipulate the information
separates Biomedical Informatics from other medical disciplines where information content is the focus.
2) Where can I train in medical informatics?
National Library of Medicine training sites in U.S.:
Harvard, New England Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Yale,
Duke-UNC, Oregon Health Sciences U., Rice-Baylor, U.Missouri,
Columbia, U. Minnesota
Some other U.S. programs: Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Utah, Alabama,
U.Washington, Harvard/Center for Clinical Computing, U.Penn/
Philadelphia VA Medical Center
Outside U.S.: Victoria (Canada), Geneva (Switzerland), Heidelberg/
Heilbronn (Germany), Hildesheim (Germany), Luebeck (Germany),
Manchester (UK), Campinas (Brazil)
Many others exist, some of which are catalogued in the following site:
gopher://umabnet.ab.umd.edu:152/11/files
Contacts for most of the U.S. programs listed above can be obtained from the following WWW page:
http://www-camis.stanford.edu/academics/informaticsprgms.html
3) What do people trained in Medical Informatics do?
Many people who train in medical informatics have professional degrees in a health related area. Nurses, physicians, medical librarians, and computer
scientists will each find their professional niche in a different area:
Consultants with management consulting firms, hospital record managers, data analysts, librarians, senior staff in state health departments, programmer/
analysts in industry, and just good old family doctors.
Different educational programs have varying expectations for their students future careers. It is best to contact each program to explore the range
of career opportunities their graduates are prepared for.