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Biomedical Informatics: Curriculum

Adapted from the Association of American Medical Colleges Medical School Objectives Project

Biomedical Informatics Vision Statement

The Phoenix Campus Biomedical Informatics training program integrates academic and clinical experiences to develop a new generation of clinicians with enhanced informatics competencies. The graduates of this curriculum will be well prepared to be leaders in their fields with regard to incorporating the principles and practice of biomedical informatics and will offer higher value patient care more universally than ever before.

Recognizing that the essence of the physician’s effectiveness in the future will flow in large part from information management and mastery, this aim is accomplished by a highly innovative curriculum which includes:

  • Dynamically supporting evidence based medical training, teaching and practice via the creation of unique synergies between Valley of the Sun hospitals, healthcare providers and the biomedical industry.
  • Using case-based learning experiences by transdisciplinary, interprofessional teams which foster rich clinician – computing and informatics specialist interaction and collaboration.
  • Utilizing information systems creatively and dynamically to support training, practice and research.

KEY:
Objectives to be emphasized in concentration
Objectives not emphasized in concentration

  1. Role of Life-long Learner
    Medical education is a life- (or at least career-) long process beginning with medical school extending into residency, and continuing through years of medical practice. Support of life-long learning with biomedical informatics requires more than computer literacy. Other requirements include cognizance of the broad range of medical information resources, devices and technologies available and their relative value for particular needs, the know-how to use them, and the motivation to use them routinely. To provide a foundation for life-long learning, the successful medical school graduate should be able to do the following:
    1. Select and utilize information resources for professional and patient education, demonstrating:
      1. Practical knowledge of instructional technologies and resources available via the Internet, video teleconferencing, and other media.
      2. The ability to effectively leverage various computer-based instructional tools, including electronic tutorials and patient simulations.
      3. The ability to effectively utilize a variety of computer-based self-assessment tools.
    2. Understand how to develop information habits to maintain currency in emerging technologies and biomedical devices.
  2. Informatics Competency
    Students should possess basic fluency with common computer applications and understand how to utilize these tools to fully participate as a member of an interprofessional group.
    1. Computing competency
      1. basic skills (operating system, office applications, identification and solution of common hardware/software problems).
      2. understanding how to represent, manipulate and use information in common computer applications (pivot tables as example).
    2. Demonstrate understanding of the basis for computerized imaging and visualization tools and techniques.
    3. Mobile computing
      1. Understand the benefits and risks of pervasive information availability via mobile computing.
      2. Demonstrate the ability to utilize a variety of mobile devices and determine which is best suited to various tasks.
    4. Ability to use information and telemedicine technologies to support virtual teamwork as well as remote diagnostic / treatment techniques.
    5. Demonstrate the ability to synthesize, aggregate / fuse and apply multimodal clinical information
      1. To individual patients.
      2. How clinical information in the aggregate is used to determine health care service planning for populations.
      3. nderstanding of basic data base structures, data management and data mining.
    6. Work effectively as an individual, in interprofessional groups, and as a member of a complex health care system, demonstrating the following:
      1. The ability to use electronic personal and clinical scheduling systems.
      2. The ability to archive and organize digital information of personal and clinical import.
      3. Knowledge of online resources for legislation, political advocacy, and local health care policy setting.
    7. Understand and appreciate the value of information management and career opportunities in informatics.
  3. Electronic Health Record Literacy
    The clinician must acquire information about the patient, make clinical decisions based on available information, and document and relay findings. To lay the foundation for supporting the full range of clinical activities with informatics skills and technologies, the successful medical school graduate should be able to do the following:
    1. Understand the multigenerational and maturational history of commercially available electronic health records and the impact of these factors on their function.
    2. Fluency with electronic health record systems:
      1. Document and share patient-specific information, demonstrating the ability to record in electronic health record systems specific findings about a patient and orders directing the further care of the patient.
      2. Retrieve patient-specific information from an electronic health record system, demonstrating the ability to display selected subsets of the information available about a given patient and navigating and interpreting the clinical information.
    3. Make critical use of decision support, demonstrating knowledge of the available sources of decision support which range from diagnostic expert systems to advisories issued from an electronic health record.
    4. Respect patient (and physician) confidentiality and data security demonstrating the following:
      1. Knowledge of the legal, ethical, and medical issues surrounding patient documentation, including confidentiality and data security.
      2. The ability to use security-directed features of an electronic health record system.
      3. The ability to protect confidentiality of private information obtained from patients, colleagues, and others.
    5. How information technology can be used to develop, implement, and monitor compliance with clinical pathways and other forms of patient care protocols.
  4. Advancing the Science of Medicine
    “Research” includes traditional biomedical research performed primarily in the laboratory as well as clinical research exploring outcomes of medical interventions. These activities are performed by a relatively small proportion of physicians. However, the use of research tools and techniques is not restricted to formal studies. In addition, the relative ease of access to aggregate data in electronic form means that many clinical questions of the physician who is not a full-time researcher may be easily addressed through “ad hoc” research. Therefore, as we extend the tasks of a physician to include the examination of primary data across patients or other units, we see proper use of appropriate research tools as central to every physician’s work. Examples include determination of a practice’s case mix, determination of the incidences of diagnoses in a practice, testing the efficacy of a new treatment, and assuring quality of care.

    Physician-researchers must understand sources for data and employ methods of decision theory to help formulate testable hypotheses; and they must collect, organize, analyze and interpret the data.

    They should also have an appreciation for the roles that medical informatics and computational biology have played in the conduct of modern biomedical translational research. To establish the foundation for information techniques to support physicians in the roles as a team member of groupings of clinical and basic science investigators, the successful medical school graduate should be able to do the following:
    1. Determine what data exist relative to a clinical question or formal hypothesis, demonstrating the following:
      1. The ability to use information resources to locate existing data sources.
      2. Knowledge of data sources (including medical records, claims and reimbursement information and online data) at one’s own institution by identifying how these might be used to address a specific clinical question posed as research.
      3. The ability to identify and locate existing data sets not maintained at one’s own institution (e.g., national registry data) that might be used to address a specific clinical question posed as research.
    2. Execute a plan for data collection and organize data for analysis, demonstrating the ability to:
      1. Select an appropriate database for collecting and organizing data.
      2. Represent data in a form that is useful and supports computer-based analysis.
    3. Analyze, interpret and report findings, demonstrating the ability to:
      1. Select an appropriate software tool for analysis of data and perform simple statistical analysis and portray the results graphically.
      2. Interpret the reports of statistical software analysis.
    4. Understand the role of information technology on basic biomedical research, demonstrating an understanding of ways in which information technology supports clinical genomics and related technologies.