University Times

The School of Medicine has begun offering master's and doctoral programs in biomedical informatics, administered by the Center for Biomedical Informatics, a joint effort of Pitt and UPMC Health System.

A relatively new field, biomedical informatics is the development of advanced methods for applying information technology to health care, education and biomedical research.

The biomedical informatics training program collaborates with Pitt's School of Information Sciences. The new degree training program has a 21-member core faculty, whose primary appointments span 11 departments. Faculty expertise includes: pathology informatics, computer science and intelligent systems, clinical research and health care services, radiology informatics, library informatics, public health, biosurveillance, health information systems and dental informatics.

According to Mary Cleatus Szczepaniak, program coordinator, the basic curriculum may be shaped to concentrate studies toward dental informatics, health services research or computational biology. A specialized course of training also is available through the biomedical informatics track of the center's Intelligent Systems Program.

A 15-credit, non-degree biomedical informatics certificate program also is being offered. The center maintains its non-degree postdoctoral fellowship program, Szczepaniak said.

Students whose goals include training in bioinformatics and computational biology can take specialized courses in the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

For more information, access: http://www.cbmi.upmc.edu