Welcome to Vanderbilt University’s ACGME-accredited Clinical Informatics Fellowship program
Vanderbilt Health offers a two-year Clinical Informatics Fellowship designed to prepare physicians to lead improvement across modern healthcare systems. The program combines rigorous didactic training via the MS in Applied Clinical Informatics (MSACI) with immersive, operational experiences across Vanderbilt Health, HealthIT, and the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Fellows learn how to design, implement, evaluate, and improve informatics solutions that strengthen patient care, support clinicians, and advance health system performance.
Founded in 2015, the fellowship builds on Vanderbilt’s broader legacy in biomedical informatics, clinical systems innovation, and physician leadership development. The Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program received accreditation from the Anesthesiology Review Committee in September 2015 and admitted its inaugural fellow on 01 Jul 2016. After successful completion of the fellowship, fellows are eligible to sit for the clinical informatics subspecialty board examination. The program is operationally focused, with extensive work and partnerships across Vanderbilt Health and HealthIT. Fellows engage directly with the teams responsible for clinical applications, decision support, analytics, workflow optimization, and digital transformation across the enterprise.
Our program is especially well suited for physicians who want deep, real-world exposure to applied informatics. Vanderbilt has a longstanding national reputation in biomedical informatics and one of the largest biomedical informatics departments in the United States. At VH, fellows train in an environment where academic informatics, operational leadership, analytics, clinical systems, and frontline care are tightly connected. This creates an unusually practical learning experience: fellows do not just study informatics concepts, they participate in the work of improving how healthcare is delivered.
About Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI)
Vanderbilt has one of the largest biomedical informatics departments in the US with a long history of developing clinical informatics solutions and training students to enter the health information technology workforce. Vanderbilt uses faculty and trainee-led innovation to address challenges in the management of information, delivery of decision support, implementation and maintenance of informatics systems, and innovation in the clinical informatics realm. DBMI is also home to the Vanderbilt Clinical Informatics Center (VCLIC), which coordinates clinical informatics activities across Vanderbilt University Medical Center and works across the Medical Center and University to support clinical informatics researchers and practitioners.
Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) has over 140 primary/secondary/adjunct faculty, with secondary faculty from virtually every major clinical department. Currently Vanderbilt has over 30 clinical informatics faculty, all of whom have some degree of operational responsibility including oversight of clinician and patient-facing systems developed by faculty or, in some cases, our trainees.
Program snapshot
- Two-year ACGME-accredited clinical informatics fellowship
- Open to physicians who are ABMS board certified or board eligible in a primary specialty by fellowship start
- Strong integration with Vanderbilt Health, HealthIT, DBMI, and clinical leaders across the medical center
- Didactic learning paired with immersive operational and project-based training
- Close connection to the MS in Applied Clinical Informatics (MSACI)
Why train at Vanderbilt?
- Operational depth: Fellows work in a health system where informatics leaders are embedded in real clinical and administrative operations.
- Academic strength: The Department of Biomedical Informatics provides broad faculty expertise across clinical informatics, analytics, implementation, AI, population health, and translational science.
- Cross-disciplinary mentorship: Fellows learn from physician informaticians, HealthIT leaders, operational partners, and faculty across specialties.
- Career preparation: Training is designed to support board certification and prepare fellows for leadership roles in health systems, academia, and industry.