UM is the state’s first public university to offer a graduate program in health informatics and one of the first schools in the nation to focus specifically on consumer health informatics.

Friedman, who has more than 30 years experience in higher education, leaves a senior position as chief scientific officer of the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He starts at UM on Sept. 11.

“I was profoundly attracted by the University of Michigan’s distinctive emphasis on game-changing information technologies that will be used by health care consumers– which means all members of society — to promote health and wellness in entirely new ways,” Friedman said. “The graduates of this program will be innovators at the forefront of a revolution.”

“We are extremely fortunate to have attracted a candidate of Charles Friedman’s stature and experience to head this cutting-edge program,” said Jeff MacKie-Mason, dean of the School of Information. “Our goal is to have the leading graduate program in health informatics in the nation, and we can’t imagine anyone better qualified to help us achieve it.”

The new advanced degree reflects a major national effort to encourage the widespread use of new information tools in health care in order to decrease costs and increase the quality of care. The interdisciplinary program will offer students a range of subspecialties, including consumer health informatics, public health informatics and clinical informatics.

“Under Dr. Friedman’s direction we will educate the next generation of leaders who are equipped to meet the technical, ethical, legal and societal challenges posed by the inevitable transition toward the use of electronic records in the management of health and health care,” said Martin Philbert, dean of the School of Public Health.

Friedman has occupied his current position since 2009 and from 2007 to 2009 served as the nation’s deputy national coordinator for health information technology. He has also held federal positions as associate director for research informatics and information technology at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health and as a senior scholar at the National Library of Medicine.

Friedman led the creation of informatics programs during his professorships in medicine, information science and biomedical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina. He is the author of a well-known health informatics textbook and serves as associate editor of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

The master’s program begins in fall 2012, and will require 52 credit hours and an internship to complete. In addition, students enrolled in other graduate programs at UM may take six courses totaling 18 credits to earn a Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics. The certificate program begins in fall 2011.

For more information see: http://www.healthinformatics.umich.edu/

First, learn how to discern between how you refer to the information you’re managing. “Use” refers to how the information is passed and used within the organization. “Disclosure” refers to how that information is communicated to the public. Both of these terms are governed by the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which describes the rights a patient has to access his or her information as well as the instances when an organization is allowed to deny a patient that right.

Next, you need to learn about Protected Health Information (PHI), which refers to digital patient records dealing with the status of their health and payments as well as any information outlining the healthcare that was provided. The PHI is outlined by a document that every hospital must present at the start of patient care, called the Patient Bill or Rights or Notice of Privacy Practices, so the patient knows from the very beginning how his PHI will be used by the hospital as well as disclosed by the hospital. Finally, every health informatics professional would recommend getting familiar with the responsibilities they have when they deny access to patient information, including an outline of how patients can lodge complaints when they are denied access.

PHI covers a broad spectrum of information that relates to the status of a patient’s treatment, a patient’s payment history and what type of healthcare has been provided to that patient. This includes a range of dates from the patient’s birthday to discharge dates and patient personal data like social security numbers, addresses, and license numbers. It also includes photographs of the patient, phone numbers, and imprints of patient fingerprints. Perhaps more obviously, it also covers medical record numbers and health plan beneficiary information. Healthcare professionals must be particularly attentive to the security of patient information because of the potential compromises that exist in electronic systems.

This is why every medical facility converting to electronic medical records must employ information security officers who constantly work to improve the security of these systems, closely monitoring them to ensure that any flaw that does appear is quickly resolved. As health informatics departments expand in hospitals, a variety of career paths open up to those with talents in computer and information sciences. To learn how to advance to these positions, consider pursuing a Masters in Health Informatics, which connects the dots between information technology and healthcare services so you don’t have to.

President Obama has proposed some of the most controversial changes to healthcare in the U.S. in recent times. People are questioning everything from the cost of healthcare to the fairness of the system to the quality of the care received. They’re even debating the very basic right to healthcare for individuals in this country. With a population divided, it’s easy to get confused about healthcare reform, what’s happening right now, and what could very easily be happening in the near future.

To help you wrap your head around the state of healthcare in the United States, you can gain powerful insight from an advanced degree program in health informatics. Investigating the history of healthcare helps professionals come to a better understanding of how we got to the current state of things, and also to identify with divergent viewpoints in how the system should change. Especially for those looking to get into health communication, this knowledge can be very valuable in crafting campaigns that inform and persuade audiences toward necessary healthcare improvements.