OHSU Launches Clinical Informatics Fellowship

I am pleased to announce that Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is formally launching its clinical informatics fellowship for physicians. We are now accepting applications for those wanting to start in July, 2014. This fellowship does not replace any of our existing fellowships or other educational programs, which include programs for physicians and non-physicians alike, but is another addition to the OHSU family of informatics educational programs.

The OHSU Clinical Informatics Fellowship will provide physicians with training in clinical informatics that will enable them to achieve board certification in the new subspecialty of clinical informatics. The program will follow the format of the guidelines recently published by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The fellowship is currently applying to obtain ACGME accreditation, which will be awarded to programs starting later this year. Fellows will divide their time between informatics project work, didactic courses leading to the awarding of the Graduate Certificate in Biomedical Informatics, and clinical practice in their primary specialty. Per ACGME rules, this is a two-year fellowship that must be done full-time and completed on-site at OHSU.

The fellowship is affiliated with the OHSU Department of Medicine, with additional administrative support provided by the OHSU Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE). Physicians of all medical specialties may apply. More information has been posted to the DMICE Web site, including a link to the application form.

As defined by the ACGME, clinical informatics is 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. Eligibility for subspecialty certification is not limited to any particular medical specialty. The new specialty was launched in 2013, with physicians already working in the field able to sit for the certification exam by meeting prior practice requirements. Starting in 2018, this "grandfathering" pathway will go away, and only those completing an ACGME-accredited fellowship will be board-eligible.

This new fellowship does not replace any existing OHSU informatics fellowship or other informatics educational program. It is a new addition to the OHSU family of informatics educational opportunities that includes a graduate program, a research fellowship funded by training grants from the NLM and other sources, and clinical fellowships offered by the Portland VA and Kaiser Permanente Northwest.

OHSU will also be providing educational content to other clinical informatics fellowship programs around the country through our online educational program. I will provide more information about this in the near future.