Subscribe to RSS

DOI: 10.1055/a-2482-9071
Managing the Transition from Tradition to Innovation for the Heidelberg/Heilbronn Medical Informatics Master of Science Program
Funding None.
Abstract
Background To keep pace with the developments in the medical informatics field, the curriculum of the Heidelberg/Heilbronn Medical Informatics Master of Science program is continuously updated. In its latest revision we restructured our master's program to allow more flexibility to accommodate updates and include current topics and to enable students' choices.
Objectives This study aimed to present our new concepts for graduate medical informatics education, share our experiences, and provide insights into the perception of these concepts by advanced students and graduates.
Methods Our new curriculum consists of three core components: Areas of concentration that bundle elective courses in an important domain of medical informatics, a large catalog of elective courses, and introductory/alignment courses for students without a bachelor's degree in medical informatics. We conducted an online survey of graduates and students with at least 75 credits to assess their opinion on the program's effectiveness and attractiveness.
Results Mandatory courses include clinical medicine, project management, research, and practical training in biomedical informatics. Five areas of concentration bundle elective courses for 30 credits to provide a solid foundation in an important domain in medical informatics. These are bioinformatics, data science, computer-aided diagnosis and therapy systems, information management, and software engineering in medicine. The catalog of electives offers a total of 67 courses. About 75% of the courses are assigned to more than one area of concentration. Our survey demonstrates that the participants highly appreciate the flexibility of the electives and the opportunity to develop an area of expertise.
Conclusion Offering a high degree of flexibility to our students has motivated them to join our program and resulted in a high level of student satisfaction. By designing the curriculum with areas of concentration and providing an infrastructure that permits courses on emerging topics to be added easily to the curriculum, we were able to meet our students' expectations.
Keywords
education - medical informatics - professional training - master of science program - curriculum - strategies for health IT training - workforceProtection of Human and Animal Subjects
The survey among students and graduates was performed in compliance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects.
Ethical Approval
The survey was presented to the ethics committee of Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. It was implemented with the online survey tool SoSci (SoSci Survey GmbH, Munich, Germany).
Publication History
Received: 18 March 2024
Accepted: 30 September 2024
Accepted Manuscript online:
25 November 2024
Article published online:
09 April 2025
© 2025. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Oswald-Hesse-Straße 50, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany
-
References
- 1 Dickhaus H. A comparative summary of six health/medical informatics programs. Methods Inf Med 1994; 33 (03) 254-257 , discussion 282–284
- 2 Hasman A, Mantas J, Zarubina T. An abridged history of medical informatics education in Europe. Acta Inform Med 2014; 22 (01) 25-36
- 3 Huang QR. Competencies for graduate curricula in health, medical and biomedical informatics: a framework. Health Informatics J 2007; 13 (02) 89-103
- 4 Costa PD, Almeida J, Araujo SM. et al. Biomedical and health informatics teaching in Portugal: current status. Heliyon 2023; 9 (03) e14163
- 5 Mantas J. Biomedical and health informatics education—the IMIA years. Yearb Med Inform 2016; 1 (Suppl 1): S92-S102
- 6 Frey W, Haux R, Leiner F, Leven FJ. Medical informatics Heidelberg/Heilbronn: graduates' experiences and job situation. An inquiry among graduates having completed the curriculum of medical informatics at the University of Heidelberg/School of Technology Heilbronn. Methods Inf Med 1994; 33 (03) 290-298
- 7 Knaup P, Frey W, Haux R, Leven FJ. Medical informatics specialists: what are their job profiles? Results of a study on the first 1024 medical informatics graduates of the Universities of Heidelberg and Heilbronn. Methods Inf Med 2003; 42 (05) 578-587
- 8 Haux R, Leven FJ. Twenty years medical informatics education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn: evolution of a specialized curriculum for medical informatics. Methods Inf Med 1994; 33 (03) 285-289
- 9 Leven FJ, Haux R. Twenty five years of medical informatics education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn: discussion of a specialized curriculum for medical informatics. Yearb Med Inform 2000; (01) 120-127
- 10 Leven FJ, Knaup P, Schmidt D, Wetter T. Medical informatics at Heidelberg/Heilbronn: status-evaluation-new challenges in a specialised curriculum for medical informatics after thirty years of evolution. Int J Med Inform 2004; 73 (02) 117-125
- 11 Knaup P, Haag M, Leven FJ, Dickhaus H. Challenges in the evolution of the medical informatics program at Heidelberg/Heilbronn (Germany). Methods Inf Med 2009; 48 (01) 66-75
- 12 Greene AC, Giffin KA, Greene CS, Moore JH. Adapting bioinformatics curricula for big data. Brief Bioinform 2016; 17 (01) 43-50
- 13 Sapci AH, Sapci HA. Teaching hands-on informatics skills to future health informaticians: a competency framework proposal and analysis of health care informatics curricula. JMIR Med Inform 2020; 8 (01) e15748
- 14 Nkwanyana A, Mathews V, Zachary I, Bhayani V. Skills and competencies in health data analytics for health professionals: a scoping review protocol. BMJ Open 2023; 13 (11) e070596
- 15 van Mulligen EM, Cases M, Hettne K. et al. Training multidisciplinary biomedical informatics students: three years of experience. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2008; 15 (02) 246-254
- 16 Ammenwerth E, Knaup P, Winter A. et al. On teaching international courses on health information systems. Lessons learned during 16 years of Frank - van Swieten Lectures on Strategic Information Management in Health Information Systems. Methods Inf Med 2017; 56 (S 01): e39-e48
- 17 Winter A, Ammenwerth E, Haux R, Marschollek M, Steiner B, Jahn F. Health Information Systems. Springer International Publishing; 2023
- 18 Altman RB, Klein TE. Biomedical informatics training at Stanford in the 21st century. J Biomed Inform 2007; 40 (01) 55-58
- 19 Bichel-Findlay J, Koch S, Mantas J. et al. Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on education in biomedical and health informatics: second revision. Int J Med Inform 2023; 170: 104908
- 20 Maojo V, Kulikowski CA. Bioinformatics and medical informatics: collaborations on the road to genomic medicine?. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2003; 10 (06) 515-522
- 21 Martin-Sanchez F, Iakovidis I, Nørager S. et al. Synergy between medical informatics and bioinformatics: facilitating genomic medicine for future health care. J Biomed Inform 2004; 37 (01) 30-42
- 22 Johnson SB, Friedman RA. Bridging the gap between biological and clinical informatics in a graduate training program. J Biomed Inform 2007; 40 (01) 59-66
- 23 Hersh W. Who are the informaticians? What we know and should know. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2006; 13 (02) 166-170
- 24 Hersh W. Health and biomedical informatics: opportunities and challenges for a twenty-first century profession and its education. Yearb Med Inform 2008; 157-164
- 25 Ammenwerth E, Hackl WO. Job profiles of biomedical informatics graduates. Results of a graduate survey. Methods Inf Med 2015; 54 (04) 372-375
- 26 Macedo AA, Ruiz EES, Baranauskas JA. A survey of the job profiles of biomedical informatics graduates. Methods Inf Med 2016; 55 (05) 473-477