Medical informatics in an undergraduate curriculum: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: There is strong support for educating physicians in medical informatics, and the benefits of such education have been clearly identified. Despite this, North American medical schools do not routinely provide education in medical informatics. METHODS: We conducted a qualitative study to identify issues facing the introduction of medical informatics into an undergraduate medical curriculum. Nine key informants at the University of Toronto medical school were interviewed, and their responses were transcribed and analyzed to identify consistent themes. RESULTS: The field of medical informatics was not clearly understood by participants. There was, however, strong support for medical informatics education, and the benefits of such education were consistently identified. In the curriculum we examined, medical informatics education was delivered informally and inconsistently through mainly optional activities. Issues facing the introduction of medical informatics education included: an unclear understanding of the discipline; faculty and administrative detractors and, the dense nature of the existing undergraduate medical curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: The identified issues may present serious obstacles to the introduction of medical informatics education into an undergraduate medicine curriculum, and we present some possible strategies for addressing these issues

Using Robots in Medical Informatics Education

Although robots have been used for quite some time in education on school and university level, we found no reports of robots being used in the teaching of medical informatics. Thus we present the timetable and structure of a one week, 2 ECTS blocked course for robots in medical informatics initiated in autumn 2022. 19 participants completed the first iteration. We report about the requirements in terms of an appropriate programming environment, the combination among robots and our medical informatics lab and the results of the student’s evaluation of the first instance as well as the experiences with the two types of robots used

Medical Information Representation Framework for Mobile Healthcare

In mobile healthcare, medical information are often expressed in different formats due to the local policies and regulations and the heterogeneity of the applications, systems, and the adopted Information and communication technology. This chapter describes a framework which enables medical information, in particular clinical vital signs and professional annotations, be processed, exchanged, stored and managed modularly and flexibly in a mobile, distributed and heterogeneous environment despite the diversity of the formats used to represent the information. To deal with medical information represented in multiple formats the authors adopt techniques and constructs similar to the ones used on the Internet, in particular, the authors are inspired by the constructs used in multi-media e-mail and audio-visual data streaming standards. They additionally make a distinction of the syntax for data transfer and store from the syntax for expressing medical domain concepts. In this way, they separate the concerns of what to process, exchange and store from how the information can be encoded or transcoded for transfer over the internet. The authors use an object oriented information model to express the domain concepts and their relations while briefly illustrate how framework tools can be used to encode vital sign data for exchange and store in a distributed and heterogeneous environment

Data analytics based positioning of health informatics programs

The Master of Science in Computer Information Systems (CIS) with concentration in Health Informatics (HI) at Metropolitan College (MET), Boston University (BU), is a 40-credit degree program that are delivered in three formats: face-to-face, online, and blended. The MET CIS-HI program is unique because of the population of students it serves, namely those interested in gaining skills in HI technology field, to serve as data analysts and knowledge-based technology drivers in the thriving health care industry. This set of skills is essential for addressing the challenges of Big Data and knowledge-based health care support of the modern health care. The MET CIS-HI program was accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) in 2017

The utilization of information technology among doctors in Kelantan a comparative cross-sectional study between medical officers in the tertiary centers (HKB & HUSM) and district hospitals and health clinics.

Objectives To compare the knowledge, skills and attitudes of IT between doctors in HUSM, those in health ministry hospitals and health clinics and those from general practice. Methods A comparative cross-sectional study among 84 medical officers from HUSM, 84 medical officers from health ministry hospitals and health clinics and 84 general practitioners in Kelantan. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used. There were three domains in the questionnaire; knowledge, attitudes and practices and skills (30 questions for each domain). There were three options for the administration of the questionnaire; paper-based, computer-based and web-based. The questionnaire was tested for reliability and validity among 30 medical officers in HUSM. Results There was no significant different in knowledge and attitude among all three groups of doctors. However in skills, there was significant different among the doctors from general practitioners as compared to other two groups. Conclusions All three groups of doctors from health ministry hospitals and health clinics and those from general practice had good knowledge and positive attitude of information technology. However doctors from general practice showed a significantly lower skills in information technology

Co-innovation: the future of telemedicine in developing countries

Telemedicine which has been widely adopted in developed countries to reach all its citizens irrespective of their location is only being used for education purposes or disaster relief in developing countries. Since developing countries already suffer inadequate healthcare provision especially in remote areas, it would be essential to implement telemedicine practices for daily clinical uses rather than education use. This research argues that to understand the future of telemedicine in developing countries, both well-established technology innovations adoption factors as well as co-innovation factors should be addressed. In the context of healthcare provision, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates the healthcare resources and the organisational affiliations in co-innovation

A Survey of the Use of Telecommunications and Distance Learning in Medical Informatics Programs

This paper provides a survey of references available on the World Wide Web that illustrate the use of telecommunications and distance learning in the delivery of educational programs in Medical Informatics, which is a discipline pertaining to the communication and management of medical information. A substantive part of this paper is the list of references each of which includes the respective World Wide Web addresses. With the use of “hotlinks”, the latter provides the reader with a wealth of information about educational programs in Medical Informatics as well as health related resources

Health Informatics for Healthcare Quality Improvement: A Literature Review of Issues, Challenges and Findings

Healthcare providers in the United States are facing increasing pressures to provide high quality healthcare at affordable prices, while being compliant with a multitude of complex laws. Recent legal developments have highlighted the role of Information Technology and related systems in providing evidence based healthcare in an efficient manner. Health Informatics has become an integral part of the rapidly advancing healthcare technology scenario, and is emerging as a key resource for healthcare quality improvement in the United States. Considering the rapid pace at which the field of health informatics is advancing, it is important for researchers and the practitioners alike to stay abreast of current literature and developments in the field. This literature review paper captures and summarizes from research literature the most significant issues, challenges and findings pertaining to the field of health informatics with a focus on healthcare quality improvement

Flyer for Reed Gardner Presentations, April 2006

Flyer, with abstracts, promoting two informatics presentations given by Reed Gardner, PhD at the UNM Health Sciences Center in 2006