March 1, 2022 | LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) recently became the only institution in Arkansas and among the first in the country to gain national accreditation of its Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program for physicians.
The fellowship accreditation comes from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), providing 10 years of continued accreditation pending annual program reviews.
Clinical informatics is a new and growing field that aims to improve patient health outcomes by applying the latest advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital health and other technologies.
Offering two years of training, the program was established in 2020 by UAMS in partnership with Arkansas Children’s (ACH). It began with two fellows and now has five. The accreditation was preceded by an initial trial period and an on-site inspection by an accreditor.
“This is a significant accomplishment for us, and I am proud of the UAMS and ACH informatics leaders who partnered to make this vital program possible,” said Susan Smyth, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the College of Medicine. “The ACGME accreditation will help us lead the country in a field that is playing an increasingly important role in health care, significantly in health outcomes and health equity.”
The program is offered by the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics, led by Fred Prior, Ph.D., distinguished professor and chair.
Feliciano “Pele” Yu Jr., M.D., director of the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program, said the program is bringing rare talent to UAMS and ACH that will help drive advances locally and nationally.
“Clinical informatics professionals serve as a bridge between the practice of medicine and the advances of the digital age,” said Yu, chief medical information officer at ACH and professor and chief of the Section of Clinical Informatics at the UAMS Department of Pediatrics. “We now have a faculty team and a dynamic group of fellows working to ensure that we harness the best of our clinics, research and patient care.”
Joseph Sanford, M.D., UAMS’ chief informatics officer, directs the fellowship program at UAMS.
“The end goal is all about improving patient care, whether it is in harnessing the latest supercomputing technologies, creating algorithms to optimize care delivery, or helping design the best telemedicine or electronic health record system interfaces for patients and physicians,” said Sanford, who also directs the UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation.
The clinical informatics field was recognized less than 10 years ago as a medical subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties, and UAMS joined the first wave of about 30 institutions to offer the fellowship.
In addition to receiving specialized training, the fellows help run and improve the UAMS and ACH clinical information systems, see patients and provide informatics consultations to medical residents through a partnership with the College of Medicine Office of Graduate Medical Education. The fellows also conduct research with resource support from the UAMS Translational Research Institute.
The institute is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, Clinical and Translational Science Award #UL1 TR003107.
