Proposed Biomedical Informatics Education Programs
Biomedical Informatics Certificate
BIC faculty, led by Jinze Liu, PhD, and CCTS Training, Education and Mentoring (TEAM) will provide expanded biomedical informatics education and certificate training designed to educate a cadre of researchers and professionals with multidisciplinary backgrounds and with substantial understanding of the principles and applications of computational technology.
Students will use this enrichment to become more productive professionals, to further research in their own areas, and to engage in multidisciplinary research relying on computer and information-processing techniques. Health care and medical science are one of the major specializations of this program, which requires completion of three informatics courses taught by faculty from computer science, biology and medical science. We envision this certificate program will evolve into a formal degree program.
Biomedicial Informatics Education Needs Assessment
Through communications with the biomedical informatics community, BIC identified the following areas for further development: (1) electronic medical records; (2) decision support, health care quality, and assessment; (3) information storage, retrieval, and digital libraries; (4) imaging informatics and telemedicine; (5) organization and management issues in informatics; and (6) career and professional development.
Biomedicial Informatics Education Needs Assessment
First, BIC will gather extensive and comprehensive health data that support clinical decision-making. An academic program or research practicum related to health information technology will be developed by BIC in order to expose students to the decision-making procedure based upon the use of the collected data. The goal of this program is to develop an educational environment that links theory to real work settings.
UK's training program is more focused on educating biomedical researchers than health care professionals. BIC will actively recruit instructors and develop several teaching modalities specifically for health care professionals and trainees, and provide better access to operational informatics classes that emphasize the use of electronic medical records, telemedicine, and data mining.
Collaborating with existing imaging facilities, BIC will develop short courses introducing clinical imaging modalities. In the area of biomedical informatics organization and management, BIC will support the collaboration of several colleges in developing information management classes offered through BIC training programs.
In addition, the College of Communications and Information Studies is proposing an undergraduate information studies program within its School of Library and Information Science. The program would include the creation, organization, and preservation of digital materials related to health information technology.
Biomedicial Informatics Education Needs Assessment
By connecting three core components – health information, people, and technology – BIC is the UK educational hub of biomedical informatics. BIC's contacts through the development of the state Electronic Medical Record system and the Kentucky Ambulatory Network serve this role for the commonwealth as well.