Recent graduates and professionals interested in beginning careers specifically in health care information technology are invited to explore the 9-week Healthcare Informatics and Information Technology Professional Certificate program offered by McCombs School of Business. If you are interested in learning more about beginning a career in health IT, email questions to hihit@austin.utexas.edu.

Each course will begin and end in one of the 4 on-campus weeks in Austin (August, January, May, and the following August). In between, courses will continue online and will include a weekly 90-minute synchronous class time in addition to asynchronous activities, including assignments.

On average, you should be prepared to spend about 15 hours a week during each online class week. Most of that time will be spent reading, viewing related content, and completing assignments. In addition, you will be working on your experiential learning projects. The 90-minute class is the only time you are required to be somewhere at a particular time. You will also be part of both a small study team and a project team that will regularly submit assignments, so you will need to work with these team members to find times to coordinate your work.

The program is considered a full-time program for all enrolled students, even though students will continue in their jobs during the program year.

The faculty for the MS in Health Care Transformation is made up of faculty members from across campus, including faculty from the:

• McCombs School of Business,
• Dell Medical School,
• Moody College of Communications, and
• Hicks School of Social Work.

Yes, these courses have been developed specifically for the MS in Health Care Transformation program.

Students submit project ideas and have opportunities during the August residential to meet people they would like to work with and decide on their projects and project teams. The projects will be broken up across the 3 semesters with the fall semester focused on project proposals, spring semester focused on implementation and summer focused on analysis. The projects will culminate in the final semester with a presentation.

The MS in Health Care Transformation is for professionals who want to lead transformation in health care. Most existing graduate programs in health care, business, administration, etc. prepare students to succeed in the existing health care system.

The purpose of our program is to:

• Equip students to think differently about health care delivery,
• Set higher aspirations for what is possible in health care, and
• Realize those aspirations by learning how to design, implement, and sustain value-based transformation of health care.

To achieve this purpose, the program is oriented toward implementation and practice; it’s not a theoretical program.

All graduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin are conferred by the UT Austin Graduate School Dean.

Each cohort is comprised of about 50 students.

Students are not required to live in Austin and the program is designed to allow for working professionals across the globe to be able to enroll in the program. Students are expected to be in Austin during the Residential Weeks and students will be given academic calendars ahead of the program to be able to plan.

The year of the degree program is just the beginning of what we expect will turn into lifetime relationships. We use every opportunity to build these networks, whether it is on campus during the Residential Weeks, during the 90-minute synchronous sessions, with asynchronous assignments (like discussion boards), or working with your study teams and project teams. Everyone admitted to this program is committed to changing health care, and you will learn as much from each other as from the faculty.