As part of the federal stimulus package, health information technology (health IT) projects nationwide received significant funding and incentives. Most states, major healthcare providers and community based clinics are grappling with not only adopting electronic health record technology, but also making sure the technology improves patient care.
As a result current health IT job openings in California are mostly focused on implementing electronic solutions in healthcare and clinical settings (visit this link to get a cross section of job openings).
However, health IT and biotechnologies that enable individualized treatments and targeted therapies are inevitably linked as we move toward personalized medicine. Science Careers (January 2010) has a nice review of career paths in this area, along with useful links for professional development. Recently the FDA-NIH funded an exciting private-public partnership to stratify populations of breast cancer patients using biomarkers - a project that points towards the increasing overlap in mission between healthcare, biotechnologies, and clinical data management. Further some are predicting a new industry based on 'wireless health' that takes the idea of wireless monitoring, personal health and clinical information to the next level.
The workforce for this emerging interface of the life sciences and healthcare will involve computer scientists, project managers, software engineers, healthcare workers, clinicians, biostatisticians, geneticists, device engineers, and others.
Resources:
California Health and Human Services, e-Health Resource
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance
Master's of Science in Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics
Bioinformatics (we also include Systems Biology here) and Medical Informatics (also called Biomedical, health, or Clinical Informatics) are related multidisciplinary fields that rely on data mining and pattern recognition techniques to discover biological or clinical patterns in large amounts of data (e.g. data mining in Flow Cytometry). The majority of research and development (R&D) in the two fields can be categorized into one of three branches. The first branch is the algorithm development branch in which R&D specialists use mathematical and engineering techniques (sometimes also approaches from physical sciences) to develop new, more efficient, and/or more accurate methods to mine biological or clinical data. The second branch falls within the software engineering paradigm and primarily focuses on R&D in human-computer interface. Specifically, the branch deals with data visualization and the design of graphical user interface (GUI) that allows the user to easily visualize and interpret the results of the algorithms developed by the first branch. The third branch includes those who work on finding answers to specific biological or medical questions. This includes those working to uncover the underlying mechanisms involved in specific biological systems or specific diseases. This branch also includes much of the work being conducted in the area of Systems Biology. This program offers training for all three branches of the two fields. Students can specialize in their area of interest in the second year of the program, while the first year is individually tailored to primarily fill in the holes in the student's background required for her/his desired specialization.
This program is designated as a Professional Science Master's (PSM) program. See Biocompass PSM programs for more detail.
For more information contact: BMI Coordinator at cadams@sciences.sdsu.edu or visit the program website 
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