Milestones and Outcomes in Health and Human Services Informatics Education Programmes.

Abstract

This chapter describes the milestones and outcomes of Health and Human Services Informatics (HHSI) education programmes at master and doctoral degree level. In Finland, since the year 2000 the programmes have been based on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) recommendations on biomedical and health informatics and the master's degree programme has been twice accredited by the IMIA Accreditation Committee. The paradigm created to advance and support both education and research in the health and human services fields is used to analyse and synthesize the research focuses of students' theses and evaluate milestones. The outcomes of HHSI programmes are described using quantitative and qualitative data from a student administrative database and student theses. The research focuses and research methods were coded for master's and doctoral theses based on the HHSI paradigm. Experiences from the accreditations and feedback are summarized to provide insights for future development. Based on the results, recommendations for further development of the programmes are provided.