In 2018, a fellowship in an ACGME accredited program in clinical informatics will be required to sit for the certification exam. As of now, you may know that you can be “grandfathered” in to the speciality through documented experience, but this change will creep up on us sooner than we expect.
So, how do you qualify to sit for the clinical informatics board exam? Well, in addition to the MD/DO agree and valid license, ABPM states that the following training pathway is required:
FELLOWSHIP TRAINING PATHWAY:Completion of a fellowship program of at least 24 months in duration that is acceptable to the ABPM is required. The non-accredited fellowship training curriculum as well as a description of the actual training must be submitted. Training in a non-accredited fellowship program of less than 24 months in duration may be applied toward the practice pathway (see Practice Pathway above). Starting in 2018, only programs that are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) will be accepted.
You can read the rest of the document here.
AGME Accreditation??
You may also have noticed that it needs to be ACGME accredited, but only one program has been certified so far. The process is moving along and AGCME did come out with a document stating their requirements, and we feel that the programs listed below are on the best tracks to become ACGME certified.
***Updated 9/28***Full Disclosure: only the Stanford Program is ACGME accredited so far. ACGME is getting around to accrediting more programs as we speak.
***Updated 10/15***The Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine is also now an ACGME accredited program.
So so far we have 2 ACGME accredited programs. Looks like we’re chugging along with the ACGME accreditation! Two in under one month. We hope this pace continues!
Programs Offering Fellowships in Clinical Informatics (For M.Ds & D.Os)
California
VA Palo Alto Health Care System
Director: Douglas Owens, MD, MSc
Co-Director: Ruth Cronkite
Connecticut
West Haven Veterans Affairs Hospital
Director: Cynthia Brandt
Co-Director: Amy Justice
Indiana
Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center
Contact: Director: Richard M. Frankel, PhD
Co-Director: Matthew Bair, MD
Administrative Officer: Dennis Bengo
Maryland
Massachusetts
VA Boston Healthcare System
Contact Stephan Gaehde, MD, MPH
Minnesota
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Oregon Health and Science University
Portland VA Medical Center
Contact: Director: Susan Woods, MD, MPH
Tennessee
Nashville VAMC
Contact: Director: Steven H. Brown, MD, MS
Associate Director: Michael E. Matheny, MD, MS, MPH
Texas
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Utah
George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Salt Lake City)
Director: Bair, Byron, MD
Assistant Director: Charlene Weir, PhD
Washington
Seattle Veterans Affairs Hospital
Director: Kenric Hammond, MD
Associate Director: W. Paul Nichol, MD
Bear with us: The VA isn’t very good at putting sites on the interwebz, so we had to list their program’s contact information. You can also check out their central clinical informatics info page for more information.
Informatics Related Fellowships and Programs
Some of these don’t require an MD or DO degree, but many of them do. We’re listing these here because some of these programs may develop out their programs to include clinical informatics, since they already have strong programs in other informatics related subjects. You may want to keep an eye on these and other programs for creation of informatics fellowship positions. For a further list of programs like these, you can also check out this page.
University of Maryland Imaging Informatics Fellowship
Anesthesia Informatics at Stanford
Brigham and Womens Hospital – Radiological Informatics Fellowship
UPenn Radiology Informatics Program
Massachusetts General Program in Radiology Informatics
MD/PhD in Biomedical Informatics at University of Pittsburgh
Henry Ford Health System Pathology Informatics Fellowship
Tufts Program in Clinical Decision Making
We hope this list helps you to find the informatics program that best suits your needs. If you enjoyed it, please let us know by sharing! If you think it needs to be changed, feel free to leave a comment below or email us your concerns.