Program Overview

The Certificate in Medical Informatics program at UWF is available at the undergraduate or graduate level and provides an exploration of the interdisciplinary nature of Medical Informatics, with coverage of the newest technologies and concepts such as:

• electronic health records
• e-prescribing
• pay for performance

This is a program that should be of interest to physicians, nurses, health care administrators, business managers, medical librarians, computer scientists, technicians, engineers, and others. Nurses interested in exploring how this field impacts their career may also like to visit the Nursing Informatics at UWF page.

Putting It Together

Our emphasis is on the real world interaction between medicine and technology and not on theory. We provide practical and up-to-date examples of issues and interesting emerging technologies with regional, national, and international impacts. All courses in our certificate program were designed with input from (and are taught by) physicians, computer scientists, and business leaders. You will develop real skills that will enable you to work effectively on interdisciplinary teams.

With an emphasis on tutorials providing hands-on training, team-based online discussions, and analysis of case studies, you will learn how to use medical informatics to make a difference, particularly in the area of improving communication, patient safety, and quality of care in health care and/or public health arenas.

Specifically, upon completion of this certificate, you will be able to

1. Prioritize and defend the use of current and emerging computer technologies to physicians, administrators, and other health care professionals.
2. Evaluate commercial software products to manage medical information.
3. Analyze new and existing clinical data resources.
4. Deploy new software tools to meet the needs of a clinical practice or administration.

Is this Certificate program accredited?

Both undergraduate and graduate courses taken as part of the Certificate in Medical Informatics program are part of the accreditation UWF has with SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools). For the current status of UWF's SACS accreditation, see our FAQs.

Graduate courses are also part of the accreditation UWF has with CEPH (Council on Education for Public Health), for those students applying the courses to the online Master of Public Health program. For the current status of UWF's CEPH accreditation, see our Masters of Public Health program.

What makes our program different from those at other schools?

Our program pulls in talented instructors who are working in various organizations with different levels of medical informatics integration (from physicians working in hospitals, to business leaders developing medical informatics tools, to corporate trainers for these tools). Each course will help you to understand the lessons learned from these perspectives, as well as the best practices that are moving each type of organization forward.

All instructors are up-to-date on what is happening in the field nationally and are interested in helping the medical informatics community at-large through contributions to our School's Medical Informatics Resource Site. Completion of the Certificate program will bring you up-to-speed on where the field is headed, impacts you can make on it, and provide life-long resources to assist in deciphering the myriad of changes occurring in this field.

Where do our students come from?

Students accepted in 2007-2009 were from the following states in the U.S.: AL, FL, GA, NY, OH, TN, VA, WV. We have also accepted international students from Canada and Saudi Arabia.

• Oct 17, 2009, our new book is here!
  • Medical Informatics: Practical Guide for the Healthcare Professional, Third Edition Proceeds generated from the text (available in softback or as an eTextbook), by UWF medical informatics faculty member Robert Hoyt with Associate Editors Melanie Sutton and Ann Yoshihashi, are donated to the Medical Informatics Program at the University of West Florida, so order the paperback or download the electronic version now, and enjoy!
    
    
• Found Oct 12, 2009, from Newest Professions, Growing Salaries: 12 Jobs That Didn't Exist Until Recently

  Nursing informatics is a nursing specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. Informatics nurse specialists are registered nurses trained in graduate level informatics. Salaries start at $60,000 but can more than double after a few years' experience.
  "Most often they are liaisons between clinicians and information and computer science people. These jobs are growing because information technology is now becoming a major tool in health-care settings," says Stacey Prince of the American Nurses Association.

• Jan 28, 2009, UWF offers new master's scholarships, Pensacola News Journal
• Visit http://www.cs.uwf.edu/graduate/executiveprogram to learn more.
  
  
• Jan 18, 2009, Deeply Discounted Generic Drugs, Pensacola News Journal
• Visit www.genericmedsearch.com to learn more.
  
  
• Dec 14, 2008, Medical Information Goes Digital, Pensacola News Journal
• Visit our Medical Informatics Resources to learn more.
  
  

We'd Like to Hear from You

For more information about this certificate, please contact Stephanie L. Reedy, Academic Advisor, at medicalinformatics@uwf.edu.