Clinical Informatics Fellowship

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) and Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) sponsor a Clinical Informatics Subspecialty Fellowship that is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The fellowship is housed within the Internal Medicine program but is open to all specialties. This is a two-year fellowship, and one slot opens each year.

At the time of their appointment, fellows must be board-eligible in another clinical specialty. They will be allotted time for practice in that specialty to maintain their clinical expertise.

As the use of computerized applications and information science become increasingly intertwined with the delivery and practice of medicine, expertise in the field of clinical informatics is becoming essential to health care organizations. DBMI, one of the most venerable and well-known informatics departments, and its associated NYP Medical Informatics Services have a long history of leadership in education and research as well as practical, front-line IT service to the NYP and Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) clinical services. Graduates from DBMI’s existing educational programs have gone on to become leaders in the field of clinical informatics.

Fellows benefit from the strong connections between NYP and DBMI and the strong culture of mentoring and teaching that prevails. Many of the fellowship program’s faculty have academic appointments in DBMI and therefore have time allotted for educational activities (directing and lecturing in courses, advising students, attending and giving departmental seminars, etc.). A number of the program’s faculty also have significant leadership responsibilities at NYP and CUIMC, which significantly facilitates the mentoring of fellows as they participate in various clinical informatics rotations and operational activities.

DBMI offers a rich, multi­faceted, applied clinical informatics educational experience to fellows. The department continues to build on a decades-­long track record designing fundamental architectural elements essential to clinical computing including an efficient transactional patient database, controlled medical terminology, a clinical data warehouse, plus standards for clinical decision support and data exchange. The department has become one of the leading academic informatics units, offering masters and PhD degrees, didactic units in all four years of Columbia’s medical school curriculum, as well as a graduate­-level Professional Certification in Health Information Technology (HIT), and it continues to build a significant track record of scholarly publication and funded research. 

Clinical resources are provided through a rich set of practical, project-oriented experiences at NYP, where supervising faculty use their expertise to provide information services, analyze and manage data, and provide new biological insights for clinicians and patients. NYP has been a leader in the implementation and use of EHR and related technologies, and program faculty members are actively involved in the support and enhancement of NYP’s clinical systems and the secondary use of data for quality improvement and research.  Fellows will have direct exposure to venues where real-world informatics challenges and issues are discussed and addressed.

Didactic sessions for clinical informatics fellows are drawn from DBMI’s Professional Certification in HIT and other selected course materials. Coursework covers the fundamentals of informatics, database design, electronic health records (EHRs), HIT policy, meaningful use of EHR’s, system infrastructure, clinical data workflow, project management, system implementation, and support, data architecture, terminology management, system usability, decision support, patient engagement, risk management/privacy and security, HIT standards, healthcare data interoperability, Health Information Exchanges, using data for public health and quality improvement, plus data analytics and presentation.

Fellows attend and present in the weekly seminar run by DBMI faculty, which provides a forum for current informatics research and issues to be presented by faculty and students.

Fellows are located on the Health Sciences Campus of Columbia University and have full access to all of the scholarly resources of Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Application:
Applications for a position starting in July 2024 can be made through ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service). Our program appears under Clinical Informatics (Internal Medicine).

For information:
Program Coordinator: Marina Bonanno
Email: mmb2058@cumc.columbia.edu

Program Director: Sivan Kinberg, MD, MS, MA
Email: sk1312@cumc.columbia.edu

Associate Program Director: Bruce Forman, MD
Email: bhf4@columbia.edu