A medical information specialist develops and applies methods and techniques of informatics so as to make the use of information in healthcare safer, more efficient and more effective.

Your career prospects

The following activities are examples of the work carried out by a Medical information specialist:

• Designing systems, which can support doctors and nurses in their decisions concerning diagnosis and therapy, minimising the chance of medical errors due to misinformation. The systems can also be applied for patient logistics.
• Supporting doctors in conducting medical research, or conducting one’s own research in the field of information provision, with regard to decision-making support for diagnosis and therapy or with regard to the quality of medical and nursing practice.
• Working on setting up and managing medical records, which can be used for e.g. sustaining and evaluating the quality of the care.
• Updating coding systems and standard vocabularies, which doctors use to record findings, diagnoses or therapies.
• Developing and managing the knowledge databases of decision-making support systems.

Potential career paths

Medical information specialists work for e.g. for healthcare institutions, software companies, the pharmaceutical industry, research institutes, healthcare automation services, information provision services, insurance companies and government and semi-state-controlled healthcare institutions.

• Potential career paths for the qualified Medical Informatician include:
• Clinical Informatician
• IM Resources/Project Manager
• Health IT Consultant
• System/Applications Expert
• Process Analyst
• Evaluator
• Medical Informatics Researcher
• System/Information Designer/Architect
• Medical Data Scientist 
• Evaluation Scientist 
• Another option is to stay on in education and study for a PhD, either at Amsterdam UMC or elsewhere.

Degree

Upon successful completion of the programme, you will be awarded the title Master of Science (MSc) inMedical informatics.