Clinical Informatics Fellowship

About the Fellowship:

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 any ACGME, RCPSC or CFPC-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.

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

Operational rotations: The fellows collaborate with faculty, healthcare providers, information services (IS) teams, and leadership committees on active short and long-term projects throughout the health system. Fellows will work on projects that are broad-based across the healthcare system as well as projects within the fellow’s specific areas of medical practice and/or interest. Rotations are four-months in duration, and can be tailored to fit a fellow’s particular career focus.
Research rotations: 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.
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 elective (2) series of asynchronous online courses, live discussion groups and active learning sessions given over a two-year cycle. The full BHIS course catalog is available to the CI fellows. Through courses offered by BHIS, fellows will interact with graduate students pursuing certificate, masters 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. In order to meet this need, CI fellows are provided with Coursera subscription and encouraged to take courses for credit. Our fellows have commonly taken courses on artificial intelligence, Python programming, and data visualization using Tableau.
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 are provided $2000/year for travel related to informatics events, and are eligible for an additional $3000/year if presenting at an informatics conference or with approval. Fellows have leveraged these generous 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.
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. Opportunities includes rotations/workshops at MATTER and faculty-led research projects under Discovery Partners Institute (DPI). The program is also open (and encourages) partnering with other entities that would align with the fellow’s career goals.

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. Therefore fellows will practice medicine within the fellow’s area of medical specialty throughout the fellowship. The fellow’s clinical activity will be coordinated between the CI program and the clinical department. On average, 45 hours/month over the 2 year fellowship is expected. This allows the fellow to more fully understand the clinical workflows their operational informatics projects will impact.

Core Faculty:

Shane Borkowsky, MD (Internal Medicine, Associate CHIO)
Andy Boyd, MD (Biomedical Health Information Sciences, Associate CHIO; Associate Vice-Chancellor Data & Computing)
Dave Chestek, DO (Emergency Medicine, Co-CMIO; Director of Clinical Informatics of ED & Community Care)
William Galanter, MD, PhD (Internal Medicine, Emeritus)
Bhrandon Harris, MD (Family Medicine, Director of Primary Care Clinical Informatics)
Karl Kochendorfer, MD (Family Medicine; Chief Health Information Officer)
Tushar Patel, MD (Pathology, Program Director; Director of Pathology Informatics)
Hernan Sierra-Fernandez, MD (Neonatal Medicine, Associated Program Director, Director of Neonatal Informatics)
Manmeet Singh, DO (Pathology, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology)

Current fellows:

Second-year

Sean Huang, MD (Internal Medicine, Geriatrics)
Jorge Rodriguez, MD (Neurology)

First-year

Anwar Jebran, MD (Internal Medicine)
Kunal Patel, MD (Emergency Medicine)

Alumni:

2017:
John Manning, DO (Emergency Medicine, Director of Clinical Informatics, Carolinas Medical Center)

2018:
Roger Boodoo, MD (Radiology, Radiology Solutions Owner, Defense Health Agency)
Dave Chestek, DO (Emergency Medicine, Co-CMIO, UI Health/UIC)
Bhrandon Harris, MD (Family Medicine, Director of Primary Care Informatics, UI Health/UIC)
Zach Sonnier, DO (Internal Medicine, CMIO, US Air Force)

2019:
Al Alsadi, MD (Pathology, Director of Pathology Informatics, U. of Wisconsin Madison).
Monique Diaz, MD (PM&R, CMIO, Dignity Health)

2020:
Kamel Azhar, MD (Family Medicine)
John Zulueta, MD (Psychiatry, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, UI Health/UIC)

2021:
Sagar Harwani, MD (Internal Medicine, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Associate CMO, Director of Clinical Informatics, Physician Advisor; UI Health/UIC)
Jai Nebhrajani, MD (Family Medicine, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, Physician Advisor; UI Health/UIC)

Requirements:

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.

GME Benefits:

– UIC offers a generous vacation and sick leave policy. Fellows are allowed 20 working days of vacation per year, and 24 calendar days of sick leave per year. Fellows are also allowed the same number of holidays available to other essential clinical staff.
– Resident stipend
– Resident Agreement

Please visit the UIC Graduate Medical Education Office for more complete information on stipends and benefits, including the GME Policy Manual.

UIC/UIH Campus:

– University of Illinois at Chicago, GME Recruitment Video
– C ampus Map

Application:

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

Interested applicants should contact:

Ms. Zelda Canete
Program Coordinator
University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System
Department of Pathology (MC 847)
840 S. Wood Street, CSN 130
Chicago, Illinois 60612
PH: 312-355-0482
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UICCIFellowship