Faculty development for informatics: education working group workshop on objectives, methods, and assessment in informatics education

Biomedical informatics is maturing and growing rapidly as a discipline. There is an increasingly recognized need to expand the biomedical and health informatics workforce, and an expanding array of educational opportunities and training programs, addressing the needs of learners from a wide array of disciplines, at multiple levels of expertise. On the horizon are new forms of certification, and ongoing efforts exist to define the competencies that are needed in the various roles that biomedical and health informatics professionals will occupy. In the midst of all this, an unmet need exists for faculty development. Who will train the thousands of learners expected to enter our field? Who will train the trainers?