Dive Brief:
- Medical students are highly interested in the emerging field of clinical informatics (CI), but are discovering medical school training in the discipline is seriously lacking, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
- The study, backed by the AMA, surveyed 557 medical students from Brown University's Alpert Medical School, Oregon Health & Science University's School of Medicine, the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Medical School, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. More than half of the students were interested in CI electives, with 30% of them indicating they'd like to pursue a career related to CI.
- However, less than a third of respondents claimed to have knowledge of where to find CI training programs, or even if their school offered CI-related elective classes. The researchers concluded that medical schools needed to be more aggressive in creating CI classes and ensuring that students are aware of the offerings.
Dive Insight:
The first generation facing a new paradigm always has it the hardest, and it could be argued that the healthcare industry is in its first tech-oriented generation. That could help explain why the transition to EHRs and other health data technology, and connecting that tech to patient outcomes, seems to be so difficult to achieve.
The next generation, however, won't have the luxury of ignoring tech innovation. Offering robust CI training to med students is vitally important to the future of healthcare, because that's where the industry will find its next group of medical/tech experts who understand intuitively how technology can fuel, enhance and drive positive patient outcomes.