Creating learning health systems and the emerging role of biomedical informatics
In this 2022 paper published in the journal Learning Health Systems, Kohn et al. of Wake Forest School of Medicine’s Center for Biomedical Informatics describe the evolution of an academic biomedical informatics program in the scope of a “learning health system” (LHS) and improving decision making in the clinical field. The authors first provide background information on topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and how they they are trained upon and accepted within the clinical community. They then describe the concept of the LHS and what is required to understand and utilize it well, followed by full details of their biomedical informatics program and its incorporation of LHS at Wake Forest. The authors conclude that programs such as its Clinical Scholars in Informatics (CSI) program “can be broadly applied to most internal medicine programs across the United States” and that such programs clearly provide “bidirectional net benefits for the resident physicians and for the health system as a whole.” They add that enabling clinical students in “understanding the role of AI and predictive analytics, and how to apply them, will become progressively more important” as the era of big data continues to grow.
