The Biomedical Informatics Scholarly Concentration

Description

The explosion in data from all areas of biology has led to the growth of new fields such as bioinformatics, computational genomics, structural genomics, pharmacogenomics, and systems biology. The development of these areas in turn results in new medical practices and the need to understand and manage this information in the context of clinical care. The BMI program broadly encompasses bioinformatics, medical informatics, and public health to form a program of study, which spans the informatics needs of both biology and medicine.

Stanford University provides, through a combination of the MD Program and the BMI program, a scholarly concentration for students seeking the MD Degree with an interest in Biomedical Informatics. Medical students are encouraged to attend the weekly Seminar and Colloquium to learn more about the research and to meet the students and faculty. They are held every Tuesday and Thursday during the academic year at 12:15-1:15 in Lusted Library on the second floor of the Medical School Office Building (MSOB). If there are specific questions about the BMI Scholarly Concentration track, please contact the BMI coordinator.

There are two tracks, the scholarly area, which requires six elective units and the Scholarly Concentration , which requires another six elective units. Since Biomedical informatics focuses on the understanding and development of methods to manage, analyze and understand biomedical date, our area is well suited as preparation for modern biomedical research projects that demand computational approaches in order to begin the data analysis. We encourage students to consider pairing the BMI scholarly concentration with other Scholarly Areas. Students who desire greater depth in biomedical informatics, should consider signing up for both the scholarly area and the scholarly concentration.

The Concentration provides sufficient time for preparation for training that students may pursue the MD/MS option, which takes about 5 years to complete; and/or the MD/PhD option, which takes about 6-7 years to complete. However, students who are interested in the graduate degrees should declare their scholarly area or concentration by the end of the first year in order to begin their graduate studies.

For general information, please refer to the Medical School website.