The University will become one of the National Library for Medicine's sites for medical informatics training in June after having successfully filed a proposal for funding from the organization last March.
The practice of medical informatics deals with applying "computer and communications technology to the field of health," according to a NLM press release.
The University was one of the 18 schools recently approved for funding by the NLM, according to James Harrison, Jr., director of the University's division of clinical informatics in public health sciences and leader of the medical portion of the program.
The University's program takes a unique approach to researching and teaching medical informatics in that it incorporates systems engineering with biomedical science and medical informatics, according to a document released by the systems and information engineering department.
Harrison said the program seeks to combine engineering technology with medical science. He also noted that the program was designed in response to a fall 2005 Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering report titled "Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Healthcare Partnership."
"Most programs of this kind have their own perspective on informatics," Harrison said. "Our perspective was to create a combination of engineering, specifically systems engineering, and medical informatics. Medicine is one of the last fields that these [engineering] techniques have been applied to ... The kinds of techniques that helped make the airline or nuclear power industry as safe as they are now are only beginning to penetrate into medicine."
Stephanie Guerlain, associate professor of the systems and information engineering department and the leader of the engineering portion of the program, said "the main focus will be on how to improve healthcare delivery through better information systems."
Trainees will choose to concentrate in one of five specializations including computational statistics and simulation, risk and decision analysis, human-machine systems, optimization and control and systems integration.
According to an executive summary, the program will be funded over five years and will be open to 18 qualified doctoral and postdoctoral trainees. The University's department of systems engineering will administer the program, and degrees will be conferred by the Engineering School.
Engineering School Dean James Aylor said the University received the grant from the National Library for Medicine as a result of its unique and novel approach to informatics.
"They thought that U.Va. was the only place this approach could work because of the previously demonstrated collaborative nature of the two programs here at the University," Aylor said.
Harrison noted that participating students will be afforded dual mentorship from both medical and engineering experts.
The training program will begin this fall.
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