Curriculum and Requirements

Our master’s degree in biomedical informatics requires a minimum of 36 credit hours. This includes core, selective and elective courses.

If you have previous professional or graduate training — or a desire to develop more specialized expertise or skills — you may concentrate your studies in one of our department’s five divisional tracks instead of general bioinformatics.

Our curriculum for the general biomedical informatics master’s degree is as follows:

In lieu of our general biomedical informatics master’s degree, you may pursue your degree in one of our five divisions:

Your curriculum will mirror that of your peers in general bioinformatics, with these exceptions:

1. Your first-year selective courses must include the corresponding course in your track. For example, if you’re on the Clinical Informatics track, you would take BMI 505.
2. Your remaining selective and elective courses, as well as your final project — either a research thesis or practicum project — must complement, reinforce or extend your knowledge and skills in your track.
3. Your faculty adviser for your final project must be based in, or affiliated with, your divisional track.

Whether pursuing your degree in one of our concentrated tracks or in general bioinformatics, you must complete a research thesis or a practicum project.

We offer you 12 protected credit hours for this work.

If you choose to write and defend a thesis, a faculty adviser will supervise your progress along with a committee consisting of two departmental or affiliated faculty members.

You’ll select your adviser and committee members no later than the spring semester of your first year, based on your mentored research experience during the fall.

You’ll complete your project the final two semesters of the program.

In addition to writing a thesis suitable for publication in a scientific journal, you’ll present and defend it to our department.

If you’re interested in professionally managing health information systems or coordinating health information projects, we recommend that you select the practicum project option.

You’ll complete a project to evaluate, test or help implement a health information system or information management process in a health care, public health or health-related industry setting.

You’ll select a faculty adviser no later than the spring semester of the first year, based on your practicum experience during the fall. You’ll also select a professional informatics mentor in the workplace you’ve chosen for your project.

You’ll complete your project during your final two semesters, writing a report suitable for publication in a professional informatics journal and presenting it to our department.

All of our master’s candidates must:

• maintain a B average in every course
• participate in our department’s Journal Club
• attend our departmental seminars
• complete an online self-study course on the protection of human subjects
• participate in UB’s Good Research Practice training sessions