“Think Outside of Box” - Ten Commandments in Providing Optimal Health Informatics Education

Health informatics (HI) education is an interdisciplinary study that integrates healthcare sciences, information science, cognitive science, and computer science aimed to improve patient care, outcomes, healthcare workflow, quality, and health information technology implementations. There are three critical components (computer science, healthcare, and human factors) of HI education, in which healthcare is at the center. Hence, due to the involvement of multiple disciplines in HI, students from various backgrounds are presented in the classroom. Providing optimum knowledge efficiently and effectively can be challenging in HI studies, especially when there is a mixed pool of students from all over the world with various educational backgrounds. Students from healthcare backgrounds need strong technical skills, and students with technical backgrounds need to be trained in healthcare to achieve a successful HI career. However, despite offering advanced technical skills to students from healthcare backgrounds, students struggle with computer programming and advanced data analytics. Similarly, students from technical backgrounds lack a detailed understanding of the complex healthcare workflow and the needs of clinicians. To address these concerns, we have developed ten “Think Outside of Box” commandments to provide optimal education in HI and make students proficient in both technical and healthcare domain knowledge. Our preliminary data demonstrated an excellent outcome in student learning using these commandments. We hope that providing the optimal education using these commandments will allow students to think “outside of box” and develop innovative strategies and health IT applications to solve complex healthcare problems. We recommend other HI programs follow these commandments for teaching HI courses.