Graduate education in health information systems: having all your eggs in one basket

Until recently, the technological evolution of information systems (IS) within the health care field has been relatively slow and sporadic in comparison to IS development in other industries. With the growing proliferation of powerful computers and personal workstations among health professionals, the advancement of IS technologies in the health care field has great potential. Hence, there is increasing pressure to integrate IS curricula into graduate level health administration education. This article combines earlier IS curricula from both the management and health care perspectives into an integrated framework for the development of a graduate education program in health information systems (HIS). The framework divides the HIS field into three modules: (1) HIS technologies and applications; (2) HIS theories and methodologies; and (3) HIS administration and impacts. This framework is also applied to the structuring of a master's level course for training generalists in HIS with a strong emphasis on the planning and management of hospital information systems.