new graduate program in health
informatics launched this fall with
38 students, many of whom already

have advanced degrees in medicine,
nursing, and pharmacy.

“There’s a significant demand for people who
are skilled in both computing and health
care delivery,” says Stanley Hochberg,
assistant clinical professor and director of
the program. “We conducted focus groups
with Massachusetts health care leaders in
2005, and learned that there was a pressing
need for graduate education in this area.”

The program is a joint offering of CCIS
and Bouvé College of Health Sciences,
with about half the courses in IT and half
in health care. Students may begin with
introductory computing or health care
courses, depending on their educational
background. The program will include labs,
projects, and internships with health care
organizations in Greater Boston.

Virtually all of the students in the program
are working full-time in health care or IT,
Hochberg says. Courses are offered in late
afternoons and evenings to accommodate
work schedules.

The goal of the program is to give students
the skills to lead teams that design,

develop, and support health care IT
systems. Examples could include online
prescribing systems that notify doctors of
problems with allergies or dosage amounts,
handheld devices that deliver medical
records to doctors in seconds, or digital
recordkeeping systems that allow health
care facilities to share patient data securely.

“Well-designed and well-implemented
technologies are urgently needed,”
Hochberg says. “Our program will work
closely with Boston’s health care community
to ensure we are giving professionals the
training they need. Creating effective tools
requires a deep understanding of both IT
and the health care system.”

Senior leaders from Partners Healthcare,
Children’s Hospital Boston and the Caritas
Christi Healthcare System are teaching
in the program this fall.

Hochberg has been a course director at Tufts
Medical School for the past six years and
speaks and consults nationally in the areas
of health care data analysis, health care
management and quality improvement.
He is a former medical director at Harvard
Pilgrim Healthcare, former vice president of
product management at McKesson
Corporation and a former board member of
Massachusetts Health Quality Partners.

employer. International students do not need visas to get co-ops
because co-ops are considered pre-graduation practical training.

Closer to home, U.S. students are turning to CCIS for the advanced
training they need to get top IT jobs in specialized fields. Programs
like the master’s degrees in health informatics and information
assurance let students develop IT expertise tied to a specific content
area like health care and financial services, where knowledge of
regulatory demands is as important as technical expertise.

“One of the unique features of American education is that we have
a sophisticated structure for continuing education,” Finkelstein

says. “As people work in increasingly complex areas, they find they
need advanced training, and they can return to school in mid-career
to enhance their skills.”

Even at the undergraduate level, students are seeing the advantage of
developing IT skills within a particular content area. The success of
dual degree programs that combine computing with the sciences, arts,
and business are evidence of demand for a more complex set of skills.

“CCIS has the depth and breadth to offer specialized programs
for a wide range of needs,” Finkelstein says. “I am very optimistic
about our ability to help shape IT education far into the future.”