Foundations of Physician Responsibility – Health Informatics and Artificial Intelligence
What is Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI)?
Modern medical care does not happen without information and technology to help use that information. Therefore, every physician is, in part, an information scientist or informatician, integrating data and technology into how they deliver care. The field at the intersection of information, technology, and people is known as Informatics, and more specifically Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI) when applied to the medical domain.
BMHI competency is about technology, data and information science, of course. However, as the above diagram depict, those disciplines are impacted by the science of health and biology as well as organizational science, communication, and relationships. This is what defines the specific domain of BMHI – the complex interplay of all these diverse fields. (Hersh, 2009).
BMHI as a Core Competency in Medical Training
BMHI is grounded in the fundamental theorem that “a person working in partnership with an information resource is ‘better’ than that same person unassisted.” (Friedman, 2009) In a physician’s day-to-day journey, skills like effective utilization of electronic health records (EHR) are as impactful as how to use a stethoscope. Furthermore, the landscape of health technology is changing faster than ever, meaning that all physicians need the knowledge to be prepared to adapt and evolve their clinical practice as new technologies emerge and proliferate. Therefore, it is critical for every clinician to build competency in BMHI in order to excel in the exciting, challenging, information-rich clinical environment of modern medical practice.
BMHI in the FPR Curriculum and Beyond
To prepare you for this reality, we have integrated longitudinal training in core competencies of BMHI across all four years of medical school, anchored in the FPR curriculum. We will discuss the role of BMHI in all four core responsibilities of FPR, with such topics as:
- Self: Medical knowledge retrieval and management skills
- Patient: Role of information and algorithms in clinical decision support
- Team: Communicating and documenting effectively to enable collaborative multidisciplinary care
- Systems: Understanding interoperability, the data lifecycle, and the complex interplay between policy, technology, and population-level health
While much of our attention will be on the subdiscipline of clinical informatics—BMHI as applied specifically to the delivery of clinical care—you will explore other subdisciplines like clinical research informatics, public health informatics, digital health/consumer health informatics and more. You will learn critical foundational concepts of future high impact technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (AI), so that you are ready to adapt and lead in a landscape where the practice of medicine is transformed by these novel tools.
Beyond the Basics
Want to go deeper? Outside of FPR, you will also have opportunities to practice, apply, and reflect on how BMHI will be a part of your professional pathway and medical career. If you find yourself interested in a career focusing on Clinical informatics, expert teaching in BMHI will be available to you in the Immersion Phase electives. If you are intrigued by the power of data, AI, and generally advancing the science of BMHI you will have abundant research opportunities with world-renown scientists in the VUMC Department of Biomedical Informatics, one of the largest BMHI departments in the world.
Biomedical Informatics Faculty
Julian Genkins, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics
For more information on Biomedical and Health Informatics in FPR and at VUSM, please email us at fpr@vanderbilt.edu.