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Clinical Informatics Fellowship


The University of Washington (UW) Clinical Informatics Fellowship provides comprehensive training and experience in clinical informatics. The fellowship has been developed by faculty in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education (BIME) in collaboration with UW Medicine Information Technology Services and the Department of Family Medicine, the sponsoring department. Our program is ACGME accredited.

The current fellowship faculty roster includes 19 core and non-core faculty (7 core faculty are board certified in clinical informatics, and 12 additional board certified clinical informaticians are part of our rich collaborative environment); a world class academic medical center; and tight integration between institutional clinical computing and the scholarship, training and practice activities of the BIME department. BIME has 21 core faculty, 57 extended faculty and over 100 MS, PhD and postdoctoral students between our research and applied degree programs.  BIME faculty engage in the spectrum from foundational research to applied research and informatics practice, and are available as potential mentors for fellowship projects. Electives are available, and the department has collaborations with 21 UW Departments, Microsoft Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other local high tech and health services organizations.

Core informatics rotations will be through the UW Information Technology Services group. Fellows have core rotations in Inpatient Informatics, Ambulatory Informatics, Enterprise Computing (clinical analytics, data visualization, system wide quality improvement), and Priority Projects. The fellows will rotate in settings spanning from community sites to county hospitals to tertiary care sites, including the University of Washington Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center.

In their first year, fellows rotate to Seattle Children’s Hospital, working in the Children’s Hospital Association award-winning Clinical Effectiveness program. This program has created over 70 clinical pathways, with clinical decision support, and with dashboards which show if pathways are meeting their aims, and which inform quality improvement and patient safety interventions.

BIME has received training grants to train Masters and PhD students for the past 15 years, and has had formal postdoctoral training in place for over 20 years.   Fellowship didactics and research project supervision are provided through the joint School of Nursing and BIME UW Clinical Informatics and Patient Centered Technologies (CIPCT) program, an online Master’s degree program offered for clinicians since 2004. This degree program is unique in that it blends courses in clinical informatics (e.g., Electronic Health Records, Databases, Computing Fundamentals, Systems Design and Project Management) with courses in care systems management (e.g. Managing Health Systems, Managing Clinical Effectiveness). Upon completion of the program, fellows will receive a Master of Science degree.  We have over 250 alumni between our research focused MS/PhD/postdoc tracks and the CIPCT MS program; and 8 CI fellowship graduates (all of whom have graduated to leadership positions).

As part of the university community, fellows enjoy a wide array of university resources, including the nationally-renowned Health Sciences Library and an expansive library system, both online and on campus. The University of Washington itself is situated in the beautiful city of Seattle, a veritable mecca for those who enjoy the beautiful outdoors and the diverse offerings of a big city. We look forward to your application and welcome your interest.

The fellowship can accept applications from graduates in all medical disciplines. For information on how to apply, please see the Clinical Informatics Fellowship application page.