Curriculum

Throughout your training, we demonstrate our commitment to you by creating an experience that addresses your specific training needs and future goals.

At the outset of your training, our program director will meet with you to develop an individualized curriculum that will help you acquire a sophisticated set of knowledge and skills in clinical informatics.

Each quarter, we review your progress to ensure that you’re on track. To help you achieve a high degree of competency in our field, we may add to, or refine, your experiential learning experiences and didactic sessions.

Our rotations give you broad exposure to many aspects of clinical informatics, including practices for managing patient health and wellness data with EHRs.

We offer rotations in:

• Inpatient Clinical Laboratory and Catheter Systems
• Inpatient Psychiatry and Dialysis Systems
• Outpatient Systems
• Research

You’ll cover a range of topics during your rotations, including:

• database design
• employment of standards
• quality and patient safety
• biostatistics

Among other skills, you’ll gain competence crafting decision-support rules for computerized provider-order entry as well as in computer science and database methods.

Your rotations take place at three distinct clinical sites; at each one, you’ll serve on the steering committee responsible for the development, maintenance and enhancements of the respective EHR.

You’ll work with the following EHRs during your rotations:

• Cerner Electronic Medical Record
• Meditech
• Allscripts 
• MIQS (dialysis-focused software)

Your rotations remain the same each year of fellowship, though you’ll assume more sophisticated responsibilities during your second year.

Each rotation lasts three months.

During each year of your fellowship training, you’ll enjoy three months of protected time to conduct research.

You’ll become adept at defining your research goals, evaluating your findings and understanding how to apply them to patient care.

You’ll benefit directly from our department’s role as the informatics lead for UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Award — a $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health — as you’ll have numerous opportunities to collaborate with our faculty on high-impact funded studies.

You’re required to submit at least one article for journal publication as well as prepare and present at our departmental grand rounds.

You’re also expected to present at a national meeting, and we’ll provide you with a stipend to participate.

During our fellowship, you’ll devote one day a week to practicing in your primary specialty, refining your clinical abilities as you respond to your patients’ needs.

Your hands-on exposure in your rotations is complemented with formal didactics that prepare you to sit for the board-certification exam in clinical informatics.

You’ll also participate in monthly departmental grand rounds and journal club.

You’ll gain added insights into research protocol as a valued member of our departmental research review committee. With faculty, you’ll review research protocols before they're forwarded to the Institutional Review Board.

In this capacity, you’ll learn about data security and privacy as well as the trade-offs between individual and societal rights.

As part of your practice-based learning and improvement, you’ll also participate in simulations and usability studies at our university’s state-of-the-art interdisciplinary simulation center. Your sessions here will be recorded to assess your performance so, together, we can track your learning and improvement goals.