The University of Texas Health School of Biomedical Informatics has launched what it describes as the world’s first Doctorate in Health Informatics (DHI), which is designed for high-level health professionals who want not just to understand new informatics technologies but also to grasp how to implement them in the real world.
The program website says it is best suited for individuals who have at least three years of informatics experience at the management or supervisory level.
An article on the University of Texas System website quotes Susan Fenton, Ph.D., associate dean for academic affairs and an associate professor, when she noticed that applicants for the PhD program in biomedical informatics at UTHealth in Houston didn’t have any idea of what type of research they wanted to do.
“They didn’t want to do research,” she said. “They were working for healthcare organizations and wanted to keep doing so. They typically already had Master’s degrees, but the traditional research-oriented PhD programs weren’t quite right for them either. There was something missing.”
The article said that Fenton began working on the idea of a new kind of doctorate designed for professionals who expect to continue to work in healthcare. She got enthusiastic response from prospective students as well as employers, faculty, and local and state health agencies, the article said. There was a shared feeling that the healthcare system, and the technology underlying it, were transforming more rapidly than the current workforce was equipped to handle. There was an urgent need for training high-level executives to not only understand new informatics technologies, but to grasp how to implement them in the context of complex organizations and rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscapes.
“We need people who can function at that executive level who have a full appreciation for everything that is going on in the broader environment as well as in their organization,” said Fenton. “That means understanding health policy, social dynamics, health informatics, and privacy and security law, as well as how these all relate to each other.”
UTHealth did focus groups, conducted analyses of workforce trends, and examined curricula of related and overlapping programs, and then developed a new curriculum that was viable to support with existing resources.
The program accepted its first cohort of students this fall. Among the 11 students are a diverse array of professionals, including a chief medical information officer, a vice president for analytics and a senior consultant for an EHR vendor. The long-term plan is to expand to 30 students per cohort, and to hire additional faculty to meet the need.
Most of the coursework is online, and can be done on the students’ own schedule. In the first year of the program, students have to come to campus five times for additional instruction and cohort building. During subsequent semester they’re required to spend one long weekend on campus.
The curriculum includes a mix of courses that are already taught in the existing graduate program with newly developed, more business-focused courses such as “Evidence-Based Health Informatics Practice,” “Advanced Project Management,” and “Vendor Relations and Contract Negotiations.” Instead of a traditional thesis or dissertation, the program concludes with a translational practice project that students are expected to implement and evaluate within a real organization.
“It could be something like leading a major EHR overhaul at a company,” Fenton said. “When students apply to the program, they have to include a letter of support from an organization stating that it is willing to work with them on a project. It can be their employer, but it doesn’t have to be. From the letters I’ve seen so far, employers are extremely supportive, and in some cases have indicated that they will allow the student to complete that project as part of their paid work time. That says to me that the employer sees the value in this.”
