The evolution of undergraduate medical informatics programmes

This article summarizes developments in the teaching of medical informatics to undergraduate health care professionals. Whilst clinical schools are adopting quite different approaches to informatics education and training, there seem to be a number of common factors shaping educational policies and the resultant programmes. Different professional schools face similar problems in relation to resources and staff development. At the same time, examination of different syllabuses suggests the existence of divergent models as to what medical informatics should encompass, as well as different views as to what elements of the domain should be included in preliminary or undergraduate courses. The relevance of these trends to health libraries is briefly considered.