AMIA Board white paper: definition of biomedical informatics and specification of core competencies for graduate education in the discipline

Abstract

The AMIA biomedical informatics (BMI) core competencies have been designed to support and guide graduate education in BMI, the core scientific discipline underlying the breadth of the field's research, practice, and education. The core definition of BMI adopted by AMIA specifies that BMI is 'the interdisciplinary field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving and decision making, motivated by efforts to improve human health.' Application areas range from bioinformatics to clinical and public health informatics and span the spectrum from the molecular to population levels of health and biomedicine. The shared core informatics competencies of BMI draw on the practical experience of many specific informatics sub-disciplines. The AMIA BMI analysis highlights the central shared set of competencies that should guide curriculum design and that graduate students should be expected to master.

Figure 1

Biomedical informatics and its areas of application and practice, spanning the range from molecules to populations and society (adapted from Shortliffe and Blois3).

Figure 2

Interrelation of biomedical informatics and health informatics in creating a ‘virtuous circle’ of feedback for education and practice that connects basic and applied research (adapted from Shortliffe and Blois3).

Figure 3

The need to adapt biomedical informatics core competencies to the backgrounds of individual graduate program candidates.

Figure 4

Component sciences and disciplines upon which biomedical informatics depends and to which it contributes.