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COM Outlook . Winter 2015
who prefer a face-to-face option, on-
campus courses are also available.
Dr. Lou views biomedical infor-
matics as the bridge between medi-
cine and technology and expects
the need for experts in the field
“to skyrocket,” especially with the
development and acceptance of the
Affordable Care Act (ACA). The far-
reaching provisions for the ACA in-
clude gathering data and measuring
quality of care, requiring an increase
in health information careers ex-
pected to grow by 36 percent to deal
with health disparities, epidemiol-
ogy, and laboratory capacity.
Because collaboration is a key
component of a program’s success,
NSU-COM’s Biomedical Informatics
Program continues to partner with
the American Medical Informat-
ics Association 10 x 10 Certificate
Program, which aims to train 10,000
health care professionals in applied
health and medical informatics. The
prestigious honor keeps the college’s
program on par with several major
academic institutions nationwide—
including Stanford University Medi-
cal School, University of Alabama
at Birmingham, Oregon Health and
Science University, and the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Chicago.
“Through this partnership, the
quality of our program is recog-
nized nationally,” Dr. Lou said. That
national recognition increased in the
past year, as three NSU-COM affili-
ates completed the inaugural clini-
cal informatics subspecialty board
exams administered by the American
Board of Preventive Medicine in
October 2013. Jacques Orces, D.O.
(’96) is currently a student in the
Biomedical Informatics Program and
serves as the chief medical infor-
matics officer and a pediatrician at
Miami Children’s Hospital. Danielle
Oryn, D.O., M.P.H. (’02), chief medi-
cal informatics officer at Petaluma
Health Center in California, received
a graduate certificate in medical in-
formatics, while James Seltzer, D.O.,
M.S.B.I., clinical assistant professor of
obstetrics and gynecology, is a 2011
M.S.B.I. graduate.
Another organization, the Health-
care Information and Management
Society (HIMSS), has also noticed
and commended the strength of
NSU-COM’s Biomedical Informat-
ics Program. The HIMSS Founda-
tion awards annual scholarships to
student members who have achieved
academic excellence and demon-
strate leadership potential in the
health care information and manage-
ment industry. Over the past several
years, two NSU-COM Biomedical
Informatics Program students were
scholarship recipients: Mark Car-
nemolla, M.S.B.I., a 2013 graduate,
and Mohammed Islam, M.S.B.I., a
2010 graduate.
The celebration of success con-
tinued in 2014 when the Biomedical
Informatics Program awarded 29
Master of Science degrees and high-
