The School of Information and Library Science along with other partners at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are planning a Master's level degree program in the area of Health Informatics. Below are details on this program.
1. Name of the degree
Health Informatics
2. CIP category
34 (Health Related Knowledge and Skills)
3. Level of program
Master's Degree
4. Brief description of the program
The goal of the program is to provide an information technology foundation to professionals interested in designing and implementing systems (both IT and organizational) to improve health care and services. The degree will be interdisciplinary in nature and it will involve collaborations among several health and IT oriented academic units on campus.
5. Time-frame for the program
Our goal is to develop a degree proposal by early next year. In the remaining time in Spring 2009 term we will engage the related academic departments in discussions and refinement of the proposed degree. We will target approval of the degree proposal by all the relevant UNC units by the end of Summer 2009. In the Fall 2009 term we will request a deliberation by the Board of Governors of the new degree program. If we succeed in this final stage, we plan to launch the degree in the Fall 2010 term.
6. Current or planned interactions with other campuses
At this point we do not have interactions with other campuses but we do plan to engage some of them in the future, particularly those with health/medical educational programs.
7. Mode of delivery of the program
We are planning for the full degree program to be available to students who enroll and attend classes at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. However, we will create online versions of a few core courses to be delivered through alternative modalities.
8. Brief rationale for the program
Health care today is one of the largest part of the US economy, reaching 2 trillion dollar about two years ago. A significant proportion of the cost, about 1 in 3 dollars, goes to service administrative overhead and not directly to the provision of care. It is also the case that about 80% of the people in the nation's patient pool do not have electronic health records. Experts believe that by applying information technology more effectively cost of care can be reduced and quality of care can be improved. Hence, there is a strong push now at many levels in our society for smarter usage of IT and engaging IT personnel in health care. These are the broad motivating factors for the new UNC HI degree.
There are a few local motivating factors as well for creating educational opportunities for health IT professionals in NC. SILS is playing a central role in the new CTSA initiative on campus. SILS has investigators that are leading activities on both research and development fronts in the CTSA initiative. As part of these activities SILS and partners are investigating NC community needs in health informatics (this is a CTSA mandate). Additionally, we have been approached by our colleagues in the Gillings School of
Global Public Health with a strong interest in developing informatics courses and modules aimed at the state's public health officials.