Clinical Informatics Courses for Medical Students

2 week, 2 credit, asynchronous/online

Clinical Informatics is a medical sub-specialty that transforms health care by analyzing, designing, implementing, and evaluating information and communication systems to improve patient care, enhance access to care, advance individual and population health outcomes, and strengthen the clinician patient relationship. 

This course offers an overview of the field, providing students with fundamental knowledge of health informatics, and how it is used to improve health and health care delivery.

2 week, 2 credit, asynchronous online content with two in-person computer labs 

Topics:

• The main concepts and challenges in medical data gathering and analysis
• Identification of aspects of data gathering and measurement, including emerging data sources
• Informatics concepts used in population health
• Use of a self-reporting tools in an electronic health record to answer population health questions, including those surrounding health equity
• Formulation of a population medicine-based clinical question, and development of a reporting strategy to answer the question
• Communication of a population medicine issue, including a potential path for improvement and a description of the measurement of any impact of proposed change

2 week, 2 credit, asynchronous online and synchronous virtual

• Clinical Informatics and the role of informaticians
• Hands-on experience in Clinical Informatics within UW Health's Information Services and Physician Informatics infrastructure
• Population health informatics
• The principles of usability, human-computer interaction, and the Five Rights of clinical decision support
• The components of implementing novel informatics tools in a large health system
• The usability and impact of new Electronic Health Records (EHR) features on various users and populations and the various factors involved in decisions to approve or deny EHR requests