Gain the tools needed to apply clinical informatics approaches to enhance your professional skills.
The program is a joint effort between the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The core faculty are physicians from the School of Medicine who are board certified in Clinical Informatics, assisted by other faculty with training in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, and Epidemiology.
The 12-credit graduate certificate Clinical Informatics is created for physicians, nurses, pharmacists, other healthcare professionals, biologists, and other scientists committed to improving the quality of care provided to patients by analyzing information collected by healthcare organizations.
Our curriculum focused on biomedical data, computational systems, and clinical process improvement, which students will apply to the practice of medicine, in order to enhance health outcomes, improve patient care, and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship. Coursework will also address bias, equity, and social determinants of health.
This certificate can be applied toward the 34-credit in M.S. in Clinical Informatics, which combines the Clinical Informatics graduate certificate with an additional graduate certificate in Data Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, along with hands-on practicums and conferences.
Note: This program is not eligible for F-1 or J-1 student visa sponsorship.
Students must complete 4 core courses at UMB (12 credits) to complete their graduate certificate in Clinical Informatics.
The instruction will be conducted in an online hyflex environment. Study from anywhere in the world, with evening and online courses (in a live, synchronous format).
Program Completion Timeline
The degree is designed for completion within 9 months, but students are allowed up to 3 years to complete the program. Participants can start the program in the fall semester.
Courses
INFO 601 Foundations in Clinical and Health Informatics
INFO 602 Clinical Information Systems
INFO 603 Computer Literacy for Healthcare Professionals
INFO 604 Decision Support Systems in Healthcare
By the completion of the Clinical Informatics graduate certificate, students will develop core competencies in four key areas: foundations and theory, clinical decision making and care process improvement, health information systems, and leadership and change management, as defined by the American Medical Informatics Association.
Graduates will walk away with the following competencies, and more:
- Describe the key concepts of Clinical Informatics, Nursing Informatics, Pharmacy Informatics, and Clinical Research Informatics.
- Analyze key concepts, models, and theories of informatics
- Analyze quality improvement efforts regarding safety, effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centeredness, timeliness, and equity.
- Understand the nature and cognitive aspects of human decision making.
- Understand evidence-based medicine, evidence sources, evidence grading, implementation of guidelines, and information retrieval and analysis
- Build effective of interdisciplinary leadership teams and communication strategies.
- Critically evaluate health information systems applications by type of functionality, setting where systems are used, telehealth capabilities, and relationship to the electronic health record.
The knowledge and skills in Clinical Informatics are crucial to future success in patient care, biomedical research, and public health, as well as to health policy design and implementation The American Medical Informatics Association (www.amia.org) estimates that 70,000 trained specialists are needed in the near future to support these efforts, with other estimates in 2018 as high as 150,000 specialists.
Physicians who specialize in Clinical Informatics assess the information needs of providers and patients, analyze clinical processes, and implement clinical information systems. They provide leadership and expertise in the procurement, customization, development, implementation, management, evaluation, and continuous improvement of clinical information systems. They work with a large range of computational systems, including electronic health record systems, decision-support systems, practice management tools, imaging systems, clinical research systems, public health systems, and genomic systems. They find employment as Chief Medical Information Officers, researchers, educators, and in industry, all of which are in high demand.
The 12 credits earned from your certificate can be used toward a MS in Clinical Informatics.
The 34-credit M.S. in Clinical Informatics is organized around an additional graduate certificate in Data Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, along 10 credits of hands-on practicums and conferences.
