Health Informatics at UNE Online – Program-Specific FAQ

In this post, we answer questions about Health Informatics at UNE Online.

Every single day, our Enrollment Counselors field some really great questions from prospective students.

Here are a few common questions about Health Informatics:

To enter the health informatics program, does your bachelor’s degree need to come from a specific field?

No, your bachelor’s degree does not need to be in a specific area. We have people from all walks of life in our health informatics programs. We tend to have more students on the clinical side of things (doctors, nurses, physicians, and pharmacists) but we also have some students on the IT spectrum of the industry, as well as students coming in with an insurance background.

The field of informatics is so large that there are people from many many different industries and sectors looking to either get their foot in the door to a new career or to open up doors in their current career path. So you don’t need any degree in particular, but you must have your bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution.

The master’s in health informatics has three focus areas – are the focus areas also available for the graduate certificate?

The graduate certificate is only six classes, so, unfortunately, the focus areas are not part of the course plan. If you were to go on and finish out the master’s degree, you would then have the option to take the classes that make up the focus area that you were interested in. Or, you have the option of taking those two focus area classes on top of the certificate curriculum, but that would be above the requirements of your graduate certificate.

Is the curriculum theoretical in nature or do we have an electronic medical record to work on?

The answer is yes and no. The curriculum has both theoretical and hands-on elements to it. You will not get a chance to work with one particular electronic medical record because, while electronic medical records are a huge part of what we talk about, electronic medical records are just a piece of what you need to know. Every medical record is vastly different, so we could not possibly teach you one to be used exclusively, but we do teach the overall concepts and theories around quality EMR implementation.

As far as hands-on skills we teach networking, SQL, and Tableau. If you are interested in the data analytics focus area, you’ll also be using a program called “R” which is a hands-on experience.

How does grading work? Are the courses mostly exams or papers?

Throughout your courses, you are mostly assessed through papers and projects. We don’t have students take any exams because, at the graduate level, we’re looking to develop you as independent learners. Graduate-level learning is less about the answers being right or wrong and more about thinking about the “why” of things. So no exams.

Students submit a fair amount of writing, case studies, and voice-over PowerPoints. We try to make the assignments as interesting and as dynamic as possible and align with the work you will be doing in the actual industry.

At the end of the master’s program, there is one large thesis-style paper due. And then when you take the technical classes, there are a lot of hands-on labs, particularly during networking labs, data visualizations in Tableau, and SQL programming. It’s a lot to learn, so we try to make it really fun.

What types of career might a Master of Science in Health Informatics at UNE Online qualify you for?

Getting a job in the field of health informatics is very different. For instance, say you’re a nurse looking for a nursing job. You type “nurse” into the Indeed.com search field and you get ten thousand nursing job results.

With health informatics it isn’t quite that way. There is a wide range of titles that fall into the health informatics realm. A health informatics professional may look for keywords such as clinical analyst, data analyst, informatics specialist, informatician, and data scientist – just to name a few. Those are also the type of job titles that you might qualify for with this degree.

After earning a master’s degree in Health Informatics at UNE Online, what new opportunities might I be eligible for?

Getting a master’s degree, in a general sense, sets you up for leadership. Even if it isn’t formal leadership, it’s thought leadership. By earning your master’s, you will be putting yourself in the position to be considered for management jobs. Leadership positions open up once you’ve earned your master’s degree.

More questions about Health Informatics at UNE Online? Leave them in the comments and we’ll get right back to you!

If you are interested in pursuing a career in health informatics, or if you’re simply interested in discussing the program, please reach out to an Enrollment Counselor at (855) 751-4445 or via email at informatics@une.edu or:

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