Clinical Informatics Fellowship at The Mount Sinai Hospital

Thank you for your interest in the Clinical Informatics Fellowship program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Although the fellowship site is The Mount Sinai Hospital, which includes our hospital clinics, and faculty practice, there will be opportunities for fellows throughout the Mount Sinai Health System because our faculty has system-wide responsibilities. Our clinical home is the Division of General Internal Medicine, and our academic affiliation is with the Center for Clinical Informatics in the Department of Pathology. Nationally renowned Clinical Informaticist Dr. Joseph Kannry, MD, leads both as the Fellowship Program Director and the Director for the Center for Clinical Informatics in the Department of Pathology.

The Mount Sinai Health System provides a broad and extensive variety of environments for training in “real world” clinical informatics. We feel that it’s the intersection of Clinical Informatics with Clinical Care that makes for the best training experience, so both must be excellent. The Mount Sinai Health System combines the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and eight hospital campuses to provide the highest quality health care throughout the New York metropolitan area. Our integrated resources and expertise offer patients comprehensive care from birth through geriatrics, including complex cases. Mount Sinai Health System, due to the number of hospitals and ambulatory care sites as well as its variety of locations, spans the entire spectrum of patients socioeconomically, culturally, and linguistically. From the affluent communities of the Upper East and West Sides of New York to a poor, indigent patient population, patients come to the Mount Sinai Health System for the very best health care.

In 2013 Mount Sinai was recipient of the prestigious 2012 Davies Award for Enterprise EHR. The Davies award recognizes “outstanding achievement in the implementation and value” from EHRs. In recognition of its innovative use of information technology to improve value-based health care, the Mount Sinai Health System was named a 2023 “Most Wired™” organization by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

Clinical Informatics has grown into a science of “analyzing, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating information and communication systems that enhance individual and population health outcomes, improve patient care, and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship”(1). “ The accelerated adoption, implementation, and optimization of EHRs made possible by Meaningful Use provided the critical mass of experts and researchers for Clinical Informatics to qualify as a new specialty(2, 3)After 2022, there will be only one path to Board eligibility: an ACGME accredited fellowship in Clinical Informatics.

The Mount Sinai fellowship is two years in length requiring the Informatics fellow to participate in both operational (i.e., service) and scholarly activities as well as being clinically active and comprised of both service and scholarly components. The clinical home is the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine and the academic home is the Center for Clinical Informatics in the Department of Pathology. We accept applications from any physician who has successfully completed an accredited residency program in any clinical specialty. We accept applications from any physician who has successfully completed an accredited residency program in any clinical specialty. The EHR used in our institution is Epic (Epic Systems, Wisconsin).

Learning Objectives for Clinical Informatics Fellowship:

  1. Understand and define the full depth and breadth of Clinical Informatics and its place in the broader field Biomedical Informatics
  2. Value and Identify  Career Paths in Clinical Informatics
  3. Utilize peer reviewed literature to answer academic and operational questions about clinical information systems
  4. Explain and review system lifecycle including selection, implementation, and optimization
  5. Utilize Clinical Workflow Analysis, Process Redesign, and Quality Improvement
  6. Characterize  high reliability organizations
  7. Recognize how and why systems are either successfully adopted or not
  8. Appreciate how Regulatory Programs such as Meaningful Use and PQRS are shaping the use of EHRs (Electronic Health Records)
  9. Realize how information can be shared across institutions electronically
  10. Identify opportunities to use  and define different types of Clinical Decision Support
  11. Define usability,  identify useable systems, and  assess system usability
  12. Explain the relationship between settings of care and EHR functionality and use
  13. Determine how the EHRs and other clinical systems can facilitate and enable clinical research
  14. Appreciate how innovative technologies such as Genomic Decision Support, eHealth, and apps are changing health care
  15. Utilize teamwork and communication skills to implement change
  16. Explain how strategic decision are made as it relates to clinical information systems
  17. Describe the techniques and value of project management

Expected Outcomes:

  1. Gain appreciation of Clinical Informatics as either an academic and/or operational career
  2. Provide input and participate  into local decision making clinical information systems
  3. Identify opportunities for  improvement in care settings
  4. Initiate continued self-learning and research project
  5. Build a foundation of Informatics knowledge and experience that will be useful in any care or research setting


Required Rotations:

  • Inpatient, Ambulatory, Emergency Department, Clinical Decision Support, Digital Medicine, Leadership, Scientific Computing, Clinical Research Informatics, Federal Regulation of Health Information Technology, Project Management, Usability 
  • Rotations are centered at Mount Sinai's main campus (Upper East Side) with supervision from Icahn School of Medicine faculty. Fellows are also exposed to other locations within the health system (e.g., Upper West Side, Queens, Brooklyn)
    Sample Block Schedule

Elective Rotations:

  • Security & Privacy, Implementation, Natural Language Processing/Artificial Intelligence, Population Health, Pathology Informatics
  • Further study in: Digital Medicine Part 1, Digital Medicine Part 2, CDS, Usability, Clinical Research Informatics, Leadership, Project Management, Federal Regulation of HIT

OHSU Didactics:

  • Fellows are enrolled in online graduate courses through Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to obtain a 24-credit graduate certificate 
  • Courses include Intro to Biomedical Informatics, Clinical Information Systems, and Organizational Behavior & Management.

Epic Certification:

  • Funding provided for at least two trips to Epic Wisconsin for certification (e.g., in Building or Analytics)

Conferences and Publications:

  • Support is provided for attendance of academic conferences including those hosted by AMIA 
  • Local presentation opportunities at MSHS available for presenting original research

Seminar Series:

The fellowship hosts an ongoing seminar series where experts are invited to discuss topics related to clinical informatics. Examples include:

  • Dona Wong, MFA: Information design and data visualization
  • Rosamond Rhodes, Ph.D.: Medical ethics
  • Glenn Martin, MD: IRB and research review processes

Journal Club:

Articles pertaining to core informatics literature are reviewed at weekly journal club sessions with informatics faculty. Examples include:

  • Walsh, KE., Marsolo., KA, Margolis, P., et al. Accuracy of the medication list in the electronic health record—implications for care, research, and improvement. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2018;25(7):909–912. 
  • Kuperman GJ, Sussman A, Schneider LI, Fiskio JM, Bates DW. Towards improving the accuracy of the clinical database: allowing outpatients to review their computerized data. Proc AMIA Symp. 1998;220–224. 
  • Wright A, McCoy AB, Hickman TT, et al. Problem list completeness in electronic health records: A multi-site study and assessment of success factors. Int J Med Inform. 2015;84(10):784–790.
  • Hanauer DA, Preib R, Zheng K, Choi SW. Patient-initiated electronic health record amendment requests. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014;21(6):992–1000. 

Clinical Practice Requirement:

  • Up to 20% clinical time will be provisioned for.

References:
1.            AMIA. Clinical Informatics Board Review Course-History: AMIA; 2014

2.            Kannry J, Sengstack P, Thyvalikakath TP, Poikonen J, Middleton B, Payne T, et al. The Chief Clinical Informatics Officer (CCIO): AMIA Task Force Report on CCIO Knowledge, Education, and Skillset Requirements. Appl Clin Inform. 2016;7(1):143-76.

3.            Kannry J, Fridsma D. The Chief Clinical Informatics Officer (CCIO). J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2016;23(2):435.

 

 

Our benefits include:

  • Four weeks of vacation are provided

  • One wellness day per quarter

  • Assistance in identifying housing opportunities in the complex NYC market will be provided. However there is no dedicated housing.

Our program accepts applications from physicians who prior to the fellowship have completed a residency in a program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Our program participates in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS).

Program name: Icahn School of Medicine
Specialty: Clinical Informatics (Internal Medicine)
ACGME ID: 1393514001

Application process timeline
Below is a general guide, actual dates may vary:

  • July 15 – Application opens, apply in ERAS
  • September (mid-late) – Decisions made on interview slots. All applicants will receive a yes or no response.
  • October (mid) to November (late) – Interviews conducted
  • December, second Wednesday of the month – National Match Day (most programs). Final decisions made

Our program number is 1393514001.

For more information, call Kate Epstein, Fellowship Coordinator, (212) 241-7761 or email.

Current Fellows

Suhani Goyal, MD: Dr Goyal is a hospitalist interested in clinical decision support, AI, change management, governance, education and operational aspects of Informatics.

Suvrat Chandra, MD: Dr Chandra is a hospitalist interested in social inequity, change management and operational aspects of clinical informatics.

Eric Epstein, MD: Dr. Epstein is an emergency medicine physician interested in optimization of technology driven workflows and operational management. He intends to further his knowledge in analytics to allow data to motivate and guide meaningful change.


Physician Faculty

Name Role
Joseph Kannry, MD Program Director, Clinical Decision Support, Federal Regulation of EHR Use, Usability, and Clinical Research Informatics Rotations
Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD Associate Program Director, CMIO, SVP Digital Technology Partners
Nikita Barai, MD Co-Rotation Director of Population Health
Lili Chan, MD, MSCR Artificial Intelligence
Nicholas Gavin, MD, MS, MBA Rotation Director Acute Care/ED/Urgent Care Informatics
Teja Ganta, MD Rotation Co-Director Artificial Intelligence Rotation
Mehrvash Haghighi, MD Pathology Informatics
Arash Kia, MD Rotation Co-Director Artificial Intelligence
Benjamin Kummer, MD Rotation Co-Director of Reporting and Analytics
Girish N. Nadkarni, MBBS, MPH Rotation Director of NLP-AI Elective
Sharon Nirenberg, MD, MA Rotation Co-Director for Reporting and Analytics Rotation
Avniel Shetreat-Klein, MD, PhD Rotation Co- Director for Inpatient Informatics, Deputy CMIO
Mahima Vijayaraghavan, MD, MBA Rotation Co-Director for Inpatient Informatics
Aditi Vakil, MBBS, MPH Senior Director of Digital Technology Partners Applications
Andrew Yu, MD Rotation Director for Clinical Informatics Ambulatory

 

Non-Physician Faculty

Name Role
Patti Cuartas, BS, MBA Associate Rotation Director of Population Health
Paul Francaviglia, BA, MS Associate Rotation Director Ambulatory Care and Digital Health