The College of Business’ Master of Science in Healthcare Informatics and Management Systems delivered degrees to 20 students this semester, including two scholarship winners.
At the April 29 graduation dinner at Juana M in Brickell, Natacha Billon and Angela Ortiz received the Best GPA awards and Christopher Chin received the Citizenship Award. Additionally, Professor Weidong Xia was named best professor and his Business Process Design course was highlighted as the program’s best.
In early April, Mathew Spiller (’15) received the 2015 scholarship from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) South Florida chapter. Presented at the organization’s 2015 conference in Chicago, the award included a $5,000 scholarship applied to Spiller’s spring semester.
Another program graduate, Juan Carlos Gallegos (’15), received the HIMSS award in 2014. An FIU student has received an HIMSS scholarship every year since the health informatics program launched in 2012.
“Initially, healthcare informatics was focused on obtaining electronic health records,” said Spiller, an analyst at Mednax, a provider of physician services in pediatric, neonatal and anesthesia specialties. “Now the emphasis is on obtaining higher quality analytics and increasing the operability with devices like Fitbit and iWatch, which can be used to transmit personal health records.”
Greater life balance through program’s extended format.
This year’s spring cohort was the first with a 14-month format, designed to give breaks to students and help them balance work-family responsibilities. The program will keep the 14-month format. Cohort 3 is now at FIU at I-75 and Cohort 4 will start there in the fall as well.
As needs and challenges in the health informatics field increase, FIU’s health informatics program is addressing them head on, giving students a clear advantage in one of the fastest growing fields in the healthcare industry. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 22 percent growth in health IT employment through 2022.
What does Spiller see in his future? A team-leading management position in a rapidly evolving industry. “There’s going to be a greater focus on fine-tuning the data, getting more beneficial information and having more engaging access with the patient.”
For more information about FIU’s Master of Science in Health Informatics & Management Systems program, visit healthinformatics.fiu.edu or contact us at mshims@fiu.edu or (305) 348-7444.
