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Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education > Prospective Informatics Students

Prospective Informatics Students

The Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI) program at the University of Washington (UW) is a nationally renowned program that stresses the synergy between teaching, research, and practice. Our Graduate Program offers a full-time research-focused Master of Science (MS) program, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program, and postdoctoral fellowships that prepare students for careers in research, teaching, and information management in academia, health care organizations, and the health care computing industry. As part of the top ranked UW School of Medicine, the program has a broad range of educational and research opportunities in healthcare. Emphasis is placed on the applied aspects of informatics, and the curriculum draws strength from the highly interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of this field.

BHI MS and PhD Curriculum

Please also see our complete specification of the BHI MS coursework requirements and PhD coursework requirements pages. Below is a more informal listing of the classes, including some example electives (i.e. non-BHI courses):

 BHI Program Core Coursework:

  • BIME 530 Introduction to Biomedical & Health Informatics
  • BIME 533 Public Health and Informatics
  • BIME 534 Biology and Informatics
  • BIME 535 Clinical Care and Informatics
  • BIME 537 Informatics Research and Evaluation Methods
  • BIME 539 Teaching, Learning and Communication in BHI
  • BIME 550 Knowledge Representation and Applications
  • BIME 554 Biomedical Information Interactions and Design
  • BIME 543 Consumer Health and Informatics *
  • BIOST 517 Applied Biostatistics I (or BIOST 537: Survival Data Analysis in Epidemiology or other equivalent biostatistics graduate course with approval) **

*  effective for Autumn 2015 cohort and later
** effective for Autumn 2014 cohort and later

See our course description page for more detailed information about each course. The above nine courses are required for all MS and PhD students. (In addition, all postdoctoral fellows must take four of the BIME courses; please see postdoc coursework requirements.) BHI core courses may be completed during one’s first year, as shown in the table below. Each course is offered only once a year in the quarters indicated. MS Students are not required to take BHI core courses all in their first year+, but can take core courses with more flexibility in order to incorporate electives and rotations.

Fall Quarter – First Year

  • BIME 530 Introduction to Biomedical & Health Informatics
  • BIOST 517 Applied Biostatistics I
  • BIME 598 Consumer Health and Informatics

Winter Quarter – First Year 

  • BIME 550 Knowledge Representation and Applications
  • BIME 533 Public Health and Informatics
  • BIME 537 Informatics Research and Evaluation Methods

Spring Quarter – First Year

  • BIME 554 Biomedical Information Interactions and Design
  • BIME 534 Biology and Informatics
  • BIME 535 Clinical Care and Informatics

Fall Quarter – Second Year

  • BIME 539 Teaching, Learning and Communication in BHI

Per the degree requirements, both MS and PhD students must also take a number of research seminars (1 credit each) and electives. The electives below are just examples, and there are many other courses that may be appropriate electives for BHI students.

BHI Research Seminars:

  • BIME 590 Selected Topics in Biomedical and Health Informatics
  • BIME 591 Biomedical and Health Informatics Research Colloquium

Example electives outside BHI:

  • CSE 510 Advanced Topics in Human-Computer Interaction
  • CSE 527 Computational Biology
  • CSE 573 Artificial Intelligence
  • GENOME 540 Intro to Computational Molecular Biology
  • INSC 570 Research Design
  • LING 570 Shallow Processing Techniques for Natural Language Processing
  • LIS 515 Ecological Information Systems
  • BIME 536/PABIO 536 Bioinformatics and Gene Sequence Analysis
  • MHE 401 History of Modern Medicine
  • PABIO 511 Pathobiological Frontiers
  • PHARM 534/HSERV 583 Economic Evaluation in Health and Medicine
  • PHG 542/MHE 530 Genetic Discovery in Medicine and Public Health
  • STAT 516 Stochastic Modeling
  • STAT 550/551/552 Statistical Genetics Series