HST has established a master's degree program to train individuals who exhibit a deep understanding of both clinical medicine and informatics issues. The core of the program emphasizes fundamental issues of computer languages and systems, and the application of artificial intelligence methods to providing decision support in clinical information systems. A strong program of individual guidance allows students to tailor their educational programs to their individual interests.
The program is open only to students who have already achieved advanced training in the health sciences, e.g., doctoral degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine, clinical psychology, or Ph.D. in medically-relevant field such as physiology. Most students will be Fellows in one of the Boston-area Medical Informatics training programs, though the program may also be open to medical students and others. A strong background in computer science and information technology is not a prerequisite, but definitely a goal of the program.
We expect graduates to become leaders in the development and application of the field of medical informatics. Those trained at the Masters level may pursue several alternative career paths. Some may view their informatics training as an adjunct to their primary training in medicine, helping them be more effective users of information processing technologies in their medical and/or research careers. Others may use their familiarity with information processing to become involved in the application of informatics technologies in hospital information systems or other medically-related computing activities.
Doctoral training in medical informatics is available through the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science's graduate program in computer science ("Area II"), and is appropriate for the strongest students who have the desire to study long and deeply, and plan to pursue academic and research leadership roles in their careers.
To qualify for a Master's degree, a student needs to complete 66 units of graduate credit plus a Master's thesis (normally 24 units). Of the 66 units, 42 must be Graduate-H units, which are awarded for "serious" classes with substantial prerequisites, and with homework, examinations and projects in some combination. The additional 24 units may be from less structured activities, such as units from supervised research, units received for acting as a teaching assistant, etc. In order for the SM degree to be specified as being in a particular field (e.g., medical informatics), 36 of the 42 Graduate-H units must be in that field. The thesis is intended to be a project that can be completed with half-time work for a semester. Despite this minimal specification, it normally takes a student a year of elapsed time to bring a Master's project to fruition.
The typical MIT class is 12 units. Hence, a plausible program of study for a student in the proposed program would consist of:
Most graduate students at MIT have responsibilities (e.g., as research or teaching assistants) that occupy about half their time, thus restricting them to taking no more than 27 units of classwork per semester (though they may earn additional units through their RA or TA). Most Fellows who are expected to participate in the Medical Informatics Master's program will also have other responsibilities at their clinical institutions; they must often also engage in clinical activities and are expected to carry on a productive stream of applied research. Therefore, although it is theoretically possible to complete the above program in one year, a two-year program is likely to be much more typical.
The typical student will take the following classes:
The first three are header subjects that introduce different areas of computer science and engineering to our undergraduates. These classes do not get graduate-H credit but are intended to provide relevant background for those students whose educational program depends on material in these classes and who have not yet been exposed to that background.
More advanced (graduate level in computer science) classes that are probably relevant to the program include the following. (This list is meant to be suggestive, not exhaustive.) A student with particularly strong preparation in a certain topic may choose to take the graduate level class in place of a more introductory class listed above. Some of these classes will be accessible to students only if they have advance preparation in their domain or if they take preparatory classes leading up to these.
Classes in the Sloan School of Management may be appropriate for some students:
Classes at the Harvard School of Public Health may also be appropriate for some students. Below is a small selection from the much more extensive HSPH catalog.
Other programs at MIT also offer relevant classes. For example:
Classes such as these cannot cover all of the topics that we believe to be important to a medical informatics student. However, when coupled with experience in a research laboratory, participation in optional seminar series, and mentoring by the senior staff in the program, students should receive a valuable and broad exposure beyond the specialization of the classes they attend.
The above proposal assumes (by choice of its required subjects) that most Masters candidates will be interested in those aspects of medical informatics concerning record keeping and decision making. This is consistent with the current focus of the Boston-area training programs, but is not the only type of student for whom a Masters in Medical Informatics makes sense. For example, a similar student who is particularly interested in image processing, radiological sciences, etc., should be able to adapt this program to fit his or her needs.
Inquiries about admission to the HST Medical Informatics Master's program should be addressed to
Medical Informatics Training Program ATTN: Robert A. Greenes, MD, PhD Decision Systems Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115 (617) 732-6281 FAX: (617) 732-6317 email: greenes@harvard.edu