A Comparative Study of the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Curriculum in Selected Universities of the World

The American Medical Association has introduced the newest medical subspecialty field known as "Clinical Informatics" since 2011. In order to present similar courses in Iran, it is necessary to design and evaluate a training program. The comparison of educational systems improves the content and quality of design of an educational program. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify and compare the clinical informatics curriculum in several top universities in the world.

The present study was an applied one conducted in 2019. The tool used in this study was a researcher-made checklist that was designed based on reviewing the texts and opinions of experts in group discussion sessions. Its validity was confirmed by seven experts in medical informatics, clinical specialties, and medical education and its reliability was confirmed using the equivalence method. The data were collected by referring to the university websites to complete the study checklist.

In most of the studied universities, the clinical informatics fellowship course was implemented according to ACGME standards and the main content of this course included four main topics: principles and concepts, clinical decision-making and improving the care process, health information systems, and guiding and managing change.

The similarities were mostly related to the duration of the course and the opportunity to conduct relevant researches in the field of clinical informatics. Most of the differences were also related to the opportunity to teach clinical informatics and learnerschr('39') participation in holding a journal club during the course.