Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program

Overview

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Department of Emergency Medicine and Division of Bioinformatics, Department of Medicine, seek outstanding applicants for fellowship training in Clinical Informatics. The training program is funded by an NIH National Library of Medicine (NLM) biomedical informatics training grant to support individuals seeking opportunities for specialization in biomedical and clinical informatics.

UCSD is a national leader in the field of health information technology (IT) and innovation. UCSD Health has been recognized as the highest level HIMSS analytics stage 7. The Department of Emergency Medicine has an established record with extramural funding from the NIH, RWJ Foundation, and recent $15.3m Beacon Community grant from the National Coordinator for Health IT. The Division of Bioinformatics in the Department of Medicine is home for an NIH-funded National Center of Biomedical Computing, and has an NLM grant to support training in a variety of areas including health care and clinical research informatics, translational bioinformatics, and public health informatics. In addition, there is strong collaboration between the UCSD School of Medicine, UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, one of the nation's top ranked Engineering Schools, and the Qualcomm Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology located at UCSD. We also have strong ties to the Veteran's Health Administration health services research unit located on campus.

The successful applicant will have a strong clinical background and interest in pursuing a career in clinical informatics and health IT. In addition to NIH training support, fellows will have the opportunity to work as faculty physicians in UCSD's two Emergency Departments (combined census of 61,000 annually with level 1 trauma center, four-year EM residency program and robust fellowship programs in Toxicology, Hyperbarics, Pediatric EM, EMS, Ultrasound, and Research). Advanced degrees, including Masters in Advanced Studies, are available and strongly encouraged as part of the two-year ACGME accredited training program. Opportunities to pursue a doctoral program are also available. The goal of the fellowship is to develop outstanding active clinical leaders with expertise in informatics and health IT.

For more information about the clinical informatics subspecialty, please visit the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) website. Other ACGME accredited programs can be found here.

Program Leadership

James Killeen, M.D., Program Director
Christian Dameff, M.D., Medical Director for Cybersecurity, UC San Diego Health
Cynthia Kuelbs, M.D., CMIO at Rady's Children's Hospital
Christopher Longhurst, M.D., Chief Information Officer
Robert El-Kareh, M.D., Course Director, Informatics in Clinical Environments
Amy Sitapati, M.D., Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego
Brian Clay, M.D., Key Clinical Faculty
Zia Agha, M.D., Executive Vice President of Clinical Research and Medical Informatics for the West Health Institute
Jeremy Nocon, Program Coordinator (619) 471-0370

Affiliated Faculty

Ramesh Rao, Director, UCSD Division of CALIT2
Lucila Ohno-Machado, M.D., Clinical Informatics
Albert Oriol, CIO for Rady's Children's Hospital
Ken Lawonn, CIO Sharp Healthcare
Daniel Chavez, Executive Director San Diego Health Connect

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Fellowship recruitment timeline?

Recruitment for the following academic year opens in May and applications will be accepted through end of business day on August 26th. Interviews will be scheduled with candidates starting in July and will run through the end of October. The Clinical Informatics Faculty will make their final candidate selections by the end of January.

What is the Duration of the Fellowship?

The ACGME requires a 2 year fellowship.

How many fellows will be accepted?

We expect to be able to offer slots for 2 candidates per year of the fellowship.

What are the requirements for eligibility?

Fellows must be board-eligible in any clinical specialty. Although the primary training site is UC San Diego Health, rotations are also offered at Rady Children’s Hospital, Veterans Administration Medical Center, San Diego, Western Health Institute, and El Centro Regional Medical Center.

Does the fellowship program accept international applicants?

International medical graduates are eligible to apply to the Clinical Informatics Fellowship if they are US Board eligible in their primary specialty. For more information about the application process for international medical graduates, click here.

I am interested in the UCSD biomedical informatics MS program. Can I do both?

Where the fellowship offers a 2 year full-time experience in applied clinical informatics, the academic MS program is a 2 year full-time program designed for individuals who wish to undertake in-depth study of biomedical informatics with research. It is not feasible to combine the programs. Fellows will have exposure to the BMI students and faculty through seminars and an annual retreat, and fellowship faculty collaborate with MS students on a project basis. However, we recommend that applicants select the program which best fits their career goals, and leadership of both programs are available to discuss the options in more detail.