Welcome!

Welcome to the UAB MSHI Program Blog! We're glad you've taken time to come visit. We created this for most of the reasons that you can probably think of:

1. It's a greener alternative (no excess paper generated, no gas guzzling postal trucks delivering newsletters to residences).
2. It's more cost effective (cost of paper newsletter = $400, cost of blog = $0).
3. Information and events of interest can now be delivered before or as they're happening, not 3 months later.
4. Blogs enable immediate dialogue by way of the "Comments" button at the end of every post (we moderate all comments to mitigate random posters and spammers).
5. Information reaches a much broader audience of heatlh informatics professionals.

We plan to post on a bi-weekly basis and will send a courtesy e-mail notification every other month via the MSHI Alumni & Student list-serves to keep you up to date with your graduate program and your alma mater.

We always like to hear from you so please leave a comment. We look forward to moving into the 21st Century with you!

Amanda Dorsey

Assistant Director, UAB MSHI Program

Student Enrollment up 100%

It was a good recruiting year for the MSHI Program. After roughly 75 inquiries and 28 application reviews, we admitted a class of 14 students for the MSHI Class of 2010. The students come from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds, including aerospace, Banking/Finance, Health Information Management, Economics, Computer Science, Business, Nursing and Research.

Look for a copy of the MSHI Student Pictorial in your mailbox in early November.

Faculty Update

We're pleased to announce the addition of a new MSHI Program faculty member, Darrell Burke, who comes to us from Florida State where he was an Assistant Professor in the College of Information. Dr. Burke earned his Ph.D. in Health Services Organizations at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Among some of his research interests are IT strategy and the intersections of governance and hospital performance, the effects of outsourcing IT functions on financial performance of hospitals and the association between hospitals’ IT capability and financial outcomes. Dr. Burke will divide his time between teaching in the MSHI and MSHA programs and contributing to departmental and cross-school research intitatives. Dr. Burke can be reached at deburke@uab.edu.