Clinical informatics board certification: history, current status, and predicted impact on the clinical informatics workforce

Abstract

Within health and health care, medical informatics and its subspecialties of biomedical, clinical, and public health informatics have emerged as a new discipline with increasing demands for its own work force. Knowledge and skills in medical informatics are widely acknowledged as crucial to future success in patient care, research relating to biomedicine, clinical care, and public health, as well as health policy design. The maturity of the domain and the demand on expertise necessitate standardized training and certification of professionals. The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) embarked on a major effort to create professional level education and certification for physicians of various professions and specialties in informatics. This article focuses on the AMIA effort in the professional structure of medical specialization, e.g., the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and the related Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). This report summarizes the current progress to create a recognized sub-certificate of competence in Clinical Informatics and discusses likely near term (three to five year) implications on training, certification, and work force with an emphasis on clinical applied informatics.

Keywords: Clinical informatics; Continuing professional development and continuing education; Education; General healthcare providers; Informatics specialists; Professional training; Strategies for health IT training; Training and education requirements.

Fig. 1

Medical informatics sub-board certification