Most successful candidates will emphasize such course work as artificial intelligence, expert systems, database management systems, computer networks, and medical subject analysis in addition to a research project. Some candidates may pursue a Master's degree in library science with a health science emphasis. Still other candidates may wish to combine their backgrounds in educational psychology, biological science, or biostatistics with health science applications. Fellowships would be for two to three years, and fellows would obtain a PhD degree preparatory for an academic career in medical informatics, or a Master's degree in Library and Information Science. The fellowship waives most of the costs of tuition, fees, and medical insurance.
Fellows also receive travel funds to participate in certain scientific meetings.
Successful applicants can expect to begin study in July or August 1992, select a mentor in their area of interest to work on research projects, and to take interdisciplinary course work in medical informatics. We particularly invite women and minority applicants. Medical informatics is the application of computers to health care. Medical informatics goes beyond the use of the computer as a computational tool and extends into the process of knowledge representation, acquisition, storage, retrieval, and manipulation largely to support reasoning, decision-making, and learning. Successful applicants can have a variety of backgrounds.