Publications

In 2002-2003, the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) undertook a study of the
future of informatics training. This project capitalized on the rapidly expanding interest in the
role of computation in basic biological research, well characterized in the NIH BISTI report.
The defining activity of the project was the three-day 2002 Annual Symposium of the College. A
committee, comprised of the authors of this report, subsequently carried out activities, including
interviews with a broader informatics and biological sciences constituency, collation and
categorization of observations, and generation of recommendations. The committee viewed
biomedical informatics as an interdisciplinary field, combining basic informational and
computational sciences with application domains including health care, biological research, and
education. Consequently, effective training in informatics, viewed from a national perspective,
should encompass four key elements: 1) curricula that integrate experiences in the computational
sciences and application domains, rather than just concatenating them; 2) diversity among
trainees, with individualized, interdisciplinary cross-training allowing each trainee to develop
key competencies that he/she does not initially possess, 3) direct immersion in research and
development activities, and 4) exposure across the wide range of basic informational and
computational sciences. Informatics training programs that implement these features,
irrespective of their funding sources, will meet and exceed the challenges raised by the BISTI
report, and optimally prepare their trainees for careers in a field that continues to evolve.