Biomedical informatics studies the structure, discovery, acquisition, integration, management, and optimal use of biomedical information. The field involves multidisciplinary research in all aspects of health care delivery, biomedical research, computational biology, and public health. Biomedical informatics applies, evaluates, and expands results from a variety of disciplines including information and computer science, library science, cognitive science, business management and organization, statistics and biometrics, data science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, operations research, economics, and of course, basic and clinical health sciences. Biomedical informatics has both "knowledge and methods" and "application domain" components. It expands beyond biomedical computer systems design, application, and evaluation to provide theory, tools, and systems that address today's most urgent challenges in health care delivery, biomedical research, and health professions education.
The curriculum offers concentration areas including: Clinical Informatics, the application of informatics to direct patient care, such as advanced decision support and person-centered health records; Translational Bioinformatics, the application of informatics to support basic research in such areas as genomics, proteomics, and systems biology; Biomedical Data Science, which integrates computation, statistics, and biomedical science to achieve reproducible success in the data science field; and Informatics for HIV/AIDS Research, which allows students to apply biomedical informatics theories and methods to an critical disease domain.
Students typically enter with a background in computing, engineering, biology, or mathematics or with a background in one of the health professions (e.g., M.D., R.N., D.D.S., Ph.D. in a health-related area such as psychology or biostatistics). After graduation they pursue careers as full-time academic researchers, part-time academic researchers/part-time clinicians, scientific managers or advanced scientists in industry, information managers in health care settings, consultants, or entrepreneurs.