About MEDINFO

On 27th June 2013 two members of the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics and the School of Medicine, were granted funds from the European Union for the project MEDINFO – Curriculum Development for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Specialist Study in Medical Informatics.

Starting from 19th August 2013, MEDINFO will last 18 months and will result in a specific study program in Croatia and the region as well.
Project value is estimated at about 170 000 € of which more than 120 000 Euros ( 72.4 %) are EU funds granted through the IPA IV - Human Resources Development through the call "Further development and implementation of the Croatian Qualifications Framework".

Informatization of the health care system is one of Croatia's priorities, and has been recognized as an important strategic goal in EU documents. Lack of experts with complementary competencies in the field of computer science on the one hand and medicine and health care on the other hand is one of the obstacles to successful informatization of the health care system. MEDINFO project will develop and test a curriculum of interdisciplinary postgraduate specialist study in medical informatics and define the qualification standard for the profession of medical informatics specialist.

The project coordinator is the University of Zagreb, Faculty of organization and informatics, and project partner is School of Medicine, "Andrija Štampar" School of Public Health. The project manager is Professor Diana Šimić, Vice-Dean for Scientific Research and International Relations at Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb.

Motivation

According to the current state of education in Croatia, it is evident that there is no formal training of medical informatics specialists, although schools of medicine do provide courses of medical informatics. There has been an example of good practice in a period from 1987 to 1998 in a form of postgraduate scientific study of Health information systems, held at School of Medicine. According to the strategy of the Croatian Government, informatization and eHealth are priorities of the Health care development strategy 2012-2020, and the informatization of the public health system is a priority of the Strategic Development Plan of Public Health from 2013 to 2015. It is therefore necessary to provide education of experts in the field of medical informatics, and the development of this study is the first step towards it.