The following report appeared a few days ago.
ABPM, AMIA advance informatics certification
Posted: November 30, 2011 - 12:30 pm ET
The American Board of Preventive Medicine remains on schedule to administer a first-ever examination for physician board certification in clinical informatics in fall 2012 while the American Medical Informatics Association is pursuing a parallel informatics certification program for nonphysicians, according to outgoing AMIA President and CEO Dr. Edward Shortliffe.
Shortliffe's update on the certification programs appears in the current issue of JAMIA, the association's journal.
The certification process will be overseen by the ABPM, but the American Board of Pathology has asked to be a co-sponsor "and two other boards have also expressed an interest in doing so" as well, Shortliffe said.
Meanwhile, the AMIA "is already well along in designing board review courses that we will offer for those who are preparing to take the certifying examination," he said.
More here:
The full paper is found here:
The title is as follows.
J Am Med Inform Assoc 2011;18:890-891 doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000582
- Messages from AMIA
President's column: subspecialty certification in clinical informatics
The key paragraphs are these is my view - after reviewing how AMIA got to where we now are - are these.
“The current plan is for clinical informatics subspecialty board examinations to be offered by ABPM starting in the autumn of 2012. For the first 5 years, practicing clinical informaticians will be able to apply for board eligibility based on their work and experience in the field. Formal criteria for such practice-based eligibility will be announced by the ABPM. One requirement, of course, will be that the applicant must already be board certified in a primary specialty by one of the ABMS boards. After the first 5 years, all candidates will need to have completed a fellowship in clinical informatics that is accredited by the ACGME. There is thus a 5-year period during which new and existing fellowships will need to be created and assessed by ACGME so that their graduates will be board eligible. The AMIA Academic Forum has been working with existing training programs to provide education about the ACGME accreditation process and to assist in the adaptation of existing fellowships to comply with ACGME requirements.
Although the certification process will be overseen by the ABPM and one or more co-sponsoring boards (the American Board of Pathology has already asked to be a co-sponsor, and two other boards have also expressed an interest in doing so), AMIA will be providing support in a variety of ways. First, we solicited self-nominations from AMIA members who are interested in serving on the ABPM clinical informatics examination committee, which will be responsible for writing examination questions based on the identified competencies for those who wish to be board certified. Several names were forwarded to the ABPM and we expect several AMIA nominees to be appointed to the question development committee. Second, AMIA is already well along in designing board review courses that we will offer for those who are preparing to take the certifying examination.
We have also recognized that many superb clinical informaticians will be ineligible for the subspecialty certification being offered by the ABMS/ABPM process. In particular, the certifying examination will be unavailable to non-physicians or to physicians who lack specialty certification through one of the ABMS boards. Nurses, pharmacists and PhDs who are working full time in clinical informatics environments clearly need a similar kind of certifying opportunity, and AMIA is committed to developing such options for all our members who wish to pursue clinical informatics certification.”
This announcement seems to me to do two important things. First it provides a way of having individuals who are skilled in using technology to support clinical care a pathway to significant professional recognition - based on experience or examination. Secondly it bridges the gap between medical clinicians and others to reach a common level or recognition and hopefully career prospects.
As I have said before we need to be considering how a similar type of recognition can be developed in Australia especially for those focussed on improvement of clinical care in all its aspects.
David.
