 |
Graduate Program in Biomedical Informatics
Brochure (pdf file) Executive Summary (pdf file)
VU-BMIP Student Admissions, Background, Studies, and Career Paths
- Entrance Requirements
- Graduates Career Paths
- Candidate Student Profiles
- Student-specific Curriculum Templates
- Admissions
- Research and Teaching Synergies and Collaborations
Entrance Requirements
The absolute requirements for candidates are:
- Good understanding of the field and strong commitment to follow a biomedical informatics career as evidenced by personal interview and letter of intent.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills (including command of the English language for native and non-native speakers) as evidenced by interview, letter of intent, and standardized language tests.
- The necessary time and funding to devote themselves to their studies.
- Standardized test scores as required by university rules, at threshold levels determined by program faculty.
The relative requirements for candidates are:
- Good record of past academic achievement in related fields as evidenced by schools/programs attained, grades, and letters of recommendation
- Prior research experience in same or related fields as evidenced by publications, letters of recommendation, or work submitted for publication.
- Overall academic aptitude as evidenced by standardized test scores.
- Enthusiasm and ability to work collaboratively as well as to undertake responsibilities assigned to them as evidenced by prior research record and letters of recommendation.
- Good working habits, persistence, patience, and good time management skills especially in light of a demanding and long training program as evidenced by letters of recommendation.
- Other non-anticipated characteristic or characteristic exceeding usual maximum score in one of the above areas suggesting excellent potential.
In general, students who satisfy the absolute requirements will be selected based on their ranking according to the relative criteria. The student selection procedure will be finalized by the Admissions Committee. In some cases we anticipate to require that otherwise qualified students take remedial courses for some of the absolute criteria in order to be accepted in the program.
Graduates Career Paths
The program will enhance and facilitate the following intended informatics-related career paths:
M.D.s, R.N.s, DDS, PhD in health-related area (e.g., psychology):
- Full-time Academic Researcher
- Part-time Academic Researcher/ Part-time Clinician
- Scientific Manager in industry
- Advanced Scientist in industry
- Information manager in Health Care setting
- Consultant or Enterpreneur
Non - Health professionals:
- Full-time Academic Researcher
- Scientific manager in industry
- Advanced scientist in industry
- Information manager in Health Care setting
- Consultant or Enterpreneur
Anticipated job descriptions corresponding to the various PhD Concentration Areas are:
Clinical Systems Concentration Area--designs, develops, evaluates, and supervises user training of clinical information systems
Decision-Support Systems & Healthcare Decision Sciences Concentration Area- -designs, develops, evaluates intelligent decision support tools and decision models/guidelines/policies
Evidence-Based-Practice Concentration Area -- uses, designs, develops, evaluates systems for optimal literature retrieval, and application.
Health Policy, Management, and Administration Concentration Area--uses, designs, develops, manages and evaluates systems for optimal information application and resource optimization at the basic research, clinical, and organizational domains.
Bioinformatics for Molecular Medicine Concentration Area --uses and designs new algorithms and/or software for medical bioinformatics applications and research.
- Clinical Bioinformatics Concentration Area -- designs/executes/evaluates studies/systems for linking molecular biology to disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment.
Candidate Student Profiles
Given the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical informatics, training of students must accommodate individuals whose initial background comes from any one of the field's component sciences. This is essential for producing graduates with training, knowledge, interests and experience that cover the full spectrum of biomedical informatics. Thus, the expected students will have prior training and potential professional or research experience in any one or more of the following: health sciences (e.g., medicine, nursing, dentistry, epidemiology, etc), computer science, information and library science, biology, applied mathematics/biostatistics, and/or economics/management.
Examples of typical expected candidates are:
- M.D.s pursuing a clinical research career, or pursuing a basic research career.
- R.N.s pursuing an academic, consulting, or management career.
- Computer science graduates with a special interest in biomedical research.
- Biostatisticians with an interest in bioinformatics or clinical research.
- Biologists with an interest in computation/bioinformatics, and health care.
Student-specific Curriculum Templates
We present here curriculum templates for students coming with a medical or Computer Science background and pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the Clinical Information Systems Area.
Bioinformatics for Molecular MedicineFocus/Non-Thesis M.S.
|
|
| VUMC Links |
| VUMC Home | | | About VUMC | | | Health Care Services | | | Schools | | | Research | | | Library | | | Search |