From: ehs@CAMIS.STANFORD.EDU (Ted Shortliffe)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genome-program
Subject: Medical Informatics Training - Stanford University
Date: 17 Nov 92 22:45:45 GMT
Distribution: bionet


                Graduate Training in Medical Informatics
                Stanford University School of Medicine

Stanford University's Medical Information Sciences (MIS) training program is an
interdepartmental program offering instruction and research opportunities
leading to an MS or a PhD degree in Medical Information Sciences (Medical
Informatics).  The program is administratively based in the Section on Medical
Informatics (SMI) in the Department of Medicine.  It is, however, overseen by
the Graduate Studies Committee of Stanford University and is viewed by the
Graduate Division as a free-standing department for purposes of granting
degrees.  The faculty of the program, which numbers over 30 participants, is
drawn broadly from throughout the medical school and other parts of the
university.  Areas of investigation are broad and include topics such as
decision-support systems, integrated workstations, knowledge acquisition, speech
input, pen-based computing, medical records, computational biology, medical
imaging, reasoning under uncertainty, medical terminology, technology
assessment, and health-services research.

The design of the Stanford program reflects our belief that the newness of the
field of medical informatics, the need for trained MIS professionals, and the
broad opportunities available at Stanford make it appropriate to provide a wide
range of training options.  We therefore offer both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees and
custom-tailor the classroom and research requirements to the diverse backgrounds
and professional needs of our students.  We require all trainees to be formal
degree candidates, believing that leaders in the field will require broad formal
course exposure in addition to intense research training.  The curriculum
provides structured but flexible exposure to topics in the areas of clinical
medicine (for trainees who are not already health professionals), computational
biology, computer science, decision science, statistics, operations research,
psychology, health policy, ethics, technology assessment, and medical
informatics itself.  Trainees attend Tuesday journal clubs and Thursday research
colloquia offered by faculty, students, staff, and visitors to the university.

The MIS training program is overseen by seven core faculty who serve on the
administrative and admissions committees.  Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD,
Professor of Medicine and of Computer Science, directs the program and serves as
head of the SMI.  Co-director of the program is Lawrence M. Fagan, MD, PhD,
Senior Research Scientist.  Drs. Shortliffe and Fagan are assisted by Mark A.
Musen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Computer Science, and
Director of the program's admissions committee.  The program's computing and
communications environment, plus advanced systems software research, is overseen
by the Symbolic Systems Resources Group (SSRG), directed by Senior Research
Scientist Thomas C. Rindfleisch, MS.  The newest core faculty include Michael
Walker, PhD (Senior Research Scientist) and Russ B. Altman, MD, PhD (Assistant
Professor of Medicine and of Computer Science), both of whom have research
programs in the area of computational biology and have built associations with
faculty in the departments of Genetics, Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Mathematics,
and Statistics.  Gio Wiederhold, PhD is on leave with the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) but will soon be returning to resume his
research and teaching in the area of database systems.

Initiated in 1982, the program has 34 graduates, including 14 with doctorates
and 20 with master's degrees.  All trainees spend half time during their first
two years in formal coursework and the remainder in focused research projects,
working with one of the program faculty (or any other faculty member in the
University who agrees to oversee their work and assure its relevance to the
medical informatics training goals of our program).  All trainees take a
comprehensive MIS oral examination after two years in the program, and MS
candidates are also expected to complete a master's research practicum by this
time.  The PhD degree adds an additional two years, with formal defense of a
thesis proposal at the end of the third year and a completed dissertation at the
end of the fourth year.

The program includes 22-25 students who are housed with the core faculty and
staff in 6500 square feet of space in the Medical School Office Building at
Stanford University School of Medicine.  We typically receive 30-40 applications
per year for 5-7 new positions.  

The principal shared computing facilities used by MIS trainees are provided by
the Center for Advanced Medical Informatics at Stanford (CAMIS).  The core CAMIS
server is a SUN 4/490 that is partially supported by a grant from the National
Library of Medicine.  All students also are provided with advanced personal
computers or Unix workstations for their research use.  Essentially all
computing facilities at the medical center and computer science department are
linked together by an ethernet communications network (SUNet) which is also
connected to most machines on campus and to national academic and research
communities through gateways to the Internet and  BITNET.  The network is also
connected to a variety of servers in the SMI and SSRG offices, including laser
printers, file servers, and telecommunication gateways.

Several trainees are supported by post-doctoral or pre-doctoral stipends through
a training grant from the National Library of Medicine.  Other trainees,
including foreign students, tend to be supported by external fellowships or by
research assistantships provided by their research preceptors.

Applications for admissions to the Stanford training program are due by January
1, with decisions announced no later than April 15th.  Trainees generally start
in mid-September at the beginning of a new academic year.  To allow physicians
in training the time to plan ahead for their post-residency fellowships,
applications are accepted either 9 months or 21 months prior to the anticipated
September of matriculation.

For brochures, a curriculum description, overviews of current research, and
information on current and past trainees, send inquiries to the program's
administrator:

	Ms. Darlene Vian
	Section on Medical Informatics
	MSOB X-215, Stanford University School of Medicine
	300 Pasteur Drive
	Stanford, CA  94305-5479
	(415) 725-3388;  Fax:  (415) 725-7944
	vian@camis.stanford.edu


Shortliffe, E.H. and Fagan, L.M.  Research training in medical informatics:  The
Stanford experience.  Academic Medicine 64(10):575-578, October 1989.

Shortliffe, E.H., Perreault, L.E., Wiederhold, G., and Fagan, L.M.  Medical
Informatics:  Computer Applications in Health Care.  Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1990.