Our Curriculum

Program philosophy

Our overall philosophy is to provide the environment, the support, and the opportunities for our fellows to pursue their interests and develop careers that they want and love. This includes providing a baseline level of mentorship, didactics, and supplementary coursework, while protecting the majority of fellows’ time to find projects and advance their skills and interests. We do not have set rotations at UCSF; instead, we have a list of program requirements that fellows must complete, which they are free to decide how and when to complete. We believe this best prepares fellows for actual informatics practice once they graduate. In general, fellows who are more comfortable with self-guidance will be a better fit for our program, and our fellows to date have been tremendously successful within this framework.

Some of the amazing achievements from our fellows include: receiving the PINA Applied Clinical Informatics Fellow of the year award; leading informatics efforts at the international, national, regional, and local levels; serving as Vice-President, member at large, and President of the AMIA Clinical Informatics Fellowship Association (ACIF); joining the editorial board of AMIA; leading a national survey on national informatics governance practices; authoring a number of peer-reviewed papers; and petitioning AMIA and the informatics community regarding policy.