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Vanessa Hall Brown
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Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions
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ATLANTA–Georgia State University will become the first public university to offer a Master of Science in Health Sciences with a concentration in Health Informatics degree, beginning in spring 2020.
Several other universities offer related degrees without the clinical focus.
Housed in the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions, the online master’s degree program is for working health care and health information technology (IT) professionals. Applicants can have an undergraduate degree in any field and should have two years’ work experience in healthcare.
Health informatics is the interdisciplinary study of the design, development and implementation of IT-based innovations in healthcare services, delivery, management and planning. Georgia is a health IT hub with more than 185 health IT companies and 15,000 employees. The need for these professionals will continue to grow as the population requires more healthcare. Health IT professionals support the data needs of healthcare providers.
“Our program will educate and produce health informatics professionals who have the knowledge, skills and competencies to contribute to Atlanta's health informatics workforce demands,” said Dr. Cedric Truss, director of the health informatics program in the Lewis College.
“This new graduate program in health informatics builds on the success of the interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in health informatics, and it’s one of our innovative ways of meeting the needs of the public,” said Dr. Huanbiao Mo, interim dean of the Lewis College.
Nearly 300 students have graduated from the health informatics program since the first class graduated in 2015.