--The Rabb School of Continuing Studies will launch a new online master's degree program this September in Health and Medical Informatics designed to train students for information technology jobs in the health care industry, according to an April 20 BrandeisNOW article.According to the article, the need for technology-trained individuals in the health care industry will increase in the coming years because the federal government is providing financial incentives for hospitals to more fully integrate digital technology into their health services by next year.

The program's website explains that students will be trained to use technology to improve the "quality, safety, efficiency and access of healthcare," and that students in the program participate in the "development, implementation, evaluation and management of information technology solutions to improve patient care."

"There's been a lot of talk about health care and health care initiatives, and this is one of the focuses: for doctors and patients to be able to share information," program director Prof. Cynthia Phillips (GPS) said in an interview with the Justice. She explained that students' training would be focused on the analytical and business aspects of health care delivery to make health services more efficient.

Previously, Health and Medical Informatics courses were taught as a specialization in the Information Technology master's program and consisted of six main courses and four electives, which are now requirements for the new program, according to an e-mail from Phillips.

The new program is now comprised of 10 courses and 30 credits and will be offered exclusively online at the same tuition rate as other graduate professional studies programs, according to the program website, although no timeframe for completing the program is specified. "We essentially have the same instructors as online and on-campus. ... The syllabi are basically the same in terms of materials used, so they're basically the same [program]," Phillips explained.

"It [launching the program completely online] really has to do with the trend in continuing education, which is online," Phillips said, noting also that the trend in graduate courses has been for more students to enroll in online courses than on-campus courses. She further explained that another goal of the program is to bring in more students and in turn more revenue.

Phillips said the first course of the program, which was offered through the IT program, reached 75 percent of the maximum student enrollment, in which every online class has a maximum of 20 students.

"We [Graduate Professional Studies staff] had been talking about it for a little bit of time, and [the idea for the program] had been around," Phillips said. Later, former Brandeis students in the information technology field working in area hospitals as well as other current professionals in the field suggested the creation of the Health and Medical Informatics program and worked together to create it.

Both Brandeis representatives and field professionals worked together on an advisory board to create the goal and details of the program, similar to all other GPS programs, according to Phillips. The program adviser is John Glaser, vice president and chief information officer of Partners Healthcare, an integrated healthcare system that provides services for its member hospitals, which include the Newton-Wellesley Hospital.