Clinical Informatics

UIC is excited to be one of the first ACGME-accredited Clinical Informatics (CI) fellowship programs. Clinical Informatics is a two-year training program that is open to graduates of ACGME accredited residency programs across all fields of medicine.

Clinical Informatics is defined in the ACGME program requirements as “the subspecialty of all medical specialties 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.” It is a relatively new subspecialty, with the first board certification examinations offered in 2013 and the initial ACGME program requirements approved in 2014.

Among the many subspecialties that have emerged within medicine, Clinical Informatics is unique. Informatics, although it has a distinct set of knowledge and skills, is an essential part of the daily practice of every specialty of medicine. As a result, the CI fellowship program at UIC has a significant impact on patient care in every department, medical education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and translational medical research being conducted in the College of Medicine and other colleges throughout the University of Illinois.

Clinical Informatics is an extremely broad field, covering many different potential areas of practice and study. The fellowship program is designed to provide the fellow with a foundation across the breadth of CI, as well as the opportunity to focus on several areas of specific interest to the fellow in which they will obtain a deeper understanding.

Application Information:

Applicants must have completed an ACGME-accredited residency program and are board-certified or board-eligible.  Applicants should be eligible for a permanent Illinois medical license. H1B visa sponsorship is not currently offered.

The program will be accepting applications through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) for the next application cycle.

• Program Name: University of Illinois College of Medicine Program
• Specialty: Clinical Informatics (Pathology)
• ACGME ID: 3021638001

Tiffany Kilpatrick, BS, LSSP-II® (she/her)
Lean Six Sigma Expert
Fellowship Program Coordinator | Clinical Pathology Faculty Coordinator | Administrative Aide
University of Illinois Chicago/College of Medicine
Department of Pathology
Email: tiffanyk@uic.edu
Phone: 312-413-9403

Many people are curious about this new field of Clinical Informatics (CI) and what it encompasses. Unfortunately, there is not one clear cut definition of this subspecialty of medicine. Even among those of use who work in this field, there is not yet consensus, as CI is so broad and touches so many different aspects of the practice of medicine that each of us comes at it from a slightly different perspective. Also, the rapid rate of evolution in this field causes us to redefine CI on a constant basis.

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) defines clinical informatics as, “the application of informatics and information technology to deliver healthcare services.” According to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), CI “promotes the understanding, integration and application of information technology in healthcare settings.” Clinical Informatics is defined in the ACGME program requirements as “the subspecialty of all medical specialties 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.”

Clinical Informatics sits at the intersection of information science, information systems, workflow and processes, and leadership and management. It is how data is acquired, structured, stored, processed retrieved, analyzed, presented and communicated. CI transforms data into useable actionable information.

Clinical Informatics is not the same thing as information technology (IT) or computer science. We are not computer doctors who fix broken computers or jammed printers. We also are (mostly) not computer programmers who code. From the point of view of CI, healthcare data is our primary focus, and IT is merely one of several sets of tools at our disposal to accomplish our goals and objectives.

Curriculum

The education program for the UIC Clinical Informatics fellowship program includes these main educational components:

1. Operational rotations: The fellows collaborate with faculty, healthcare providers, information services (IS) teams, and leadership committees on a diverse array of operational and research projects – both within the fellow’s specific areas of medical practice and/or interest, and across the spectrum of clinical practice. Rotations are three-months in duration and can be tailored to fit a fellow’s particular career focus, with options for electives that align with the fellow’s career goals. Core rotations are aligned with one of our physician informaticists and incorporate the practice of informatics within different environments/contexts: Primary Care, AI and Data Science, Emergency Medicine, Inpatient Medicine, Quality & Safety, Leadership, EMR/CDS, and Academia.
2. Research opportunities: The fellows will undertake informatics research in one or more areas of interest under the mentorship of our faculty.  It is expected that this research will be presented at national meetings and/or submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The fellows are also encouraged to approach their operational projects with an academic focus, with intent to contribute to the literature.
3. Core curriculum/Active learning course: The core curriculum has been created in conjunction with the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences (BHIS) at UIC.  Fellows will participate in a required (3) and (optional) elective (2) series of asynchronous online courses, live discussion groups and active learning sessions given over a two-year cycle. A master’s degree is not currently offered/required or reimbursed; however, the fellow is provided the flexibility to incorporate this into their fellowship. The full BHIS course catalog is available to the CI fellows. Through courses offered by BHIS, fellows will interact with graduate students pursuing certificate, master’s and doctoral degrees in health informatics. Despite the strength of our graduate curriculum in informatics, we understand there are still growing areas that fellows desire to better understand. To meet this need, CI fellows are encouraged to take one of many online courses available through AMIA, U. Buffalo, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and others. Our fellows have commonly taken courses on artificial intelligence, Python programming, and data visualization using Tableau. We provide funding for CI fellows to take the AMIA 10×10 Introduction to Biomedical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence.
4. National meetings: Attending national meetings helps fellows to understand the scope, scale and current thoughts in Clinical Informatics, and provides them the opportunity to network with informatics colleagues.  Fellows are expected to attend at least one national informatics meeting in each year of their fellowship and are encouraged to present their work at these conferences. Fellows have leveraged GME-provided funds to further their interests and present their work at national conferences. We also encourage our fellows to travel to Epic or Cerner for their CI fellowship-oriented training/networking events.
5. Innovation/Entrepreneurship: Many of our fellows indicate a strong interest in entrepreneurship and/or innovation. Our program offers a growing portfolio of internal and external programs that allow fellows to develop this interest. A unique aspect of our program is the proximity and opportunities for education at a local healthcare technology startup incubator –  MATTER.

Practicing medicine during the fellowship

The ACGME requires fellows to maintain their primary certification while training in Clinical Informatics. After graduation from the program, most fellows will be practicing medicine in addition to their informatics activities. To prepare for this environment, fellows will practice medicine within their area of medical specialty throughout the fellowship, in accordance with ACGME requirements of “20 percent of their time per week or 10 weeks of an academic year.” The fellow’s clinical activity will be coordinated between the CI program and the clinical department. This allows the fellow to more fully understand the clinical workflows their operational informatics projects will impact.