Curriculum
The Clinical Informatics Fellowship curriculum consists of a core curriculum didactic series, block rotations throughout clinical and hospital departments, and small as well as capstone scholarly projects.
Core Curriculum
Fellows participate in a structured didactic curriculum that consists of lecture series, formal coursework in the Master's in Health Informatics degree program at Louisiana Tech University, and journal clubs. The curriculum covers the expanse of topics encountered by informaticists, including:
- Information systems (networking, structure, clinical decision support)
- Data analysis and reporting (including statistical analysis
- Data science (programming, databases, machine learning)
- Healthcare delivery
- Healthcare operations (business processes, quality management)
- Leadership and team building
- Laboratory, imaging and research informatics
In addition, fellows become Epic-certified Physician Builders early in the fellowship. This certification provides the groundwork for working with EHR analysts during their rotations.
Block rotations
Fellows rotate monthly on various block rotations where they embed with clinical, administrative and analyst teams. The rotations are split between the three participating sites in Shreveport and New Orleans. Housing is provided when rotating at sites remote to the fellow's base site.
The rotations provide fellows with the ability to attain core competencies and skills needed to practice clinical informatics in a variety of career paths, including Chief Medical Information Officer. Each rotation has a director who works with the fellow to meet the objectives of the rotation.
Examples of fellowship rotations include:
- Boot camp
- Inpatient informatics
- Outpatient informatics
- Emergency care informatics
- Clinical decision support
- Community health informatics
- Laboratory and pathology informatics
- Imaging informatics
- Clinical analytics and reporting
- Privacy and security
- Business processes
- Leadership
- Quality management
Scholarly projects
A major capstone project is required of fellows, and time is set aside in the last half of the second year for its completion. This project is expected to be presented at a national meeting and submitted for publication. The fellow can select a project based on their experiences during their block rotations, and will work with a mentor assigned to the project.
One or two smaller projects are also expected of the fellow during the first year. These projects may be identified during block rotations on topics of interest to the fellow. Presentation at a national meeting and publication is expected of the smaller projects.
Master of Science in Health Informatics (MHI)
Our fellowship integrates classes from the MHI program at Louisiana Tech University into its core curriculum. At a minimum the fellow will complete requirements for a Certificate in Health Informatics (4 courses), but the fellow has the option to complete the full requirements for the Master of Science (13 courses).
Additional responsibilities
Fellows are expected to continue in clinical practice in their primary specialty. 20% of their time is allocated to this, and can be performed with additional compensation.
Teaching is an important skill as an informaticist, and the fellow is expected to provide some teaching to residents and fellows, both during the execution of their block rotations and at select resident conferences.