Transforming Healthcare Through Data: Vancouver’s new Master of Science in Health Informatics
Healthcare and technology are two of the most exciting, rapidly-evolving job markets in the world. And in the fall of 2025, students will get a new opportunity to explore them together, as Northeastern University in Vancouver launches its Master of Science in Health Informatics program.
Students in the program will learn how to turn newly available health data into efficient services, improved patient outcomes, and innovative healthcare technologies. With varied clinical, technical, and business backgrounds, students will contribute to the vibrant, interdisciplinary ecosystem fueling tech innovation in Canada.
Healthcare is about helping people, and although healthcare informatics is not direct patient care, the work that you do impacts patients.
The curriculum focuses on three core competencies. Domain-specific informatics courses help teach students about how data is deployed in the healthcare industry. Technical engineering and theoretical courses provide a foundation in the broader conceptual frameworks that extend beyond the industry. And finally, management courses prepare students to lead in the workplace. Students will develop a solid foundation in health informatics, technical engineering, and management, and also have the opportunity to dig further into the pillar of their choice through elective and capstone courses; prospective students can find out more about what’s on offer here. The program has been carefully designed to ensure that students coming into the degree with very different existing skills can all get the fullness of what the program has to offer, without having to review material they already know while their classmates with different masteries come up to speed.
The master’s program can be completed in 18 months, or 2 years if a student chooses to do a co-op, Northeastern University’s signature experiential learning program. Those that choose not to do a co-op have no shortage of collaborative interdisciplinary experiential learning opportunities through capstone projects, innovative studio partnerships, base camp collaborations, and hackathons.
While the program was developed from the base curriculum of the successful MS in Health Informatics degree offered at Northeastern’s campus in Boston, many of the courses that cover regulation and administration of the healthcare system are being modified to incorporate regulations that are unique to Canada. For example, the Boston campus’s course ‘The American Healthcare System’ will be replaced in Vancouver by a course on the Canadian healthcare system. All of this will enable graduates to enter the Canadian healthcare industry in the same types of roles that graduates from the Boston program have taken on in the United States, such as clinical data analysts, chief medical information officers, nurse informaticists, project managers, and implementation specialists – and in one case, Northeastern University Masters in Health Informatics associate program directors.
Marie Maloney was a CIO at Boston Medical Center Healthnet in 2007, when the creator of Northeastern University’s Master of Science in Health Informatics program in Boston contacted her for advice on what the program should include. Maloney apprehended the unique strengths that a masters degree in health informatics offered, and joined the first cohort instead.
“I was in the first graduating class because I saw (health informatics) as something extremely beneficial that nobody else was doing,” Maloney said. She knows what everyone else was doing, too – Maloney has served as CIO for Boston Medical Center’s HealthNet Plan and Senior Whole Health of New York and Massachusetts; as president of the New England chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS); and currently serves as CEO of AEGIS Informatics in Rhode Island in addition to her roles as a lecturer and associate program director at Northeastern University. “Healthcare is about helping people, and although healthcare informatics is not direct patient care, the work that you do impacts patients. This is a good program for people who are interested in technology, but still have that mission-driven desire.”
Her partner in founding the Northeastern in Vancouver program is Professor Jay Spitulnik, Director of the Health Informatics Graduate Program and a joint appointee between the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and Khoury College of Computer Sciences. In addition to his roles with the school, Spitulnik serves on the boards of the Society of Participatory Medicine and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Participatory Medicine. He brings a background in organizational psychology and two decades in healthcare to his project management and health informatics classrooms, and to the overall design of the new course of study.
“I’m excited by this great opportunity to grow our program, and to introduce Northeastern’s health sciences strengths to the Canadian market,” Spitulnik said.
The program will be offered fully online at first, ensuring all students will have access to the world-class Khoury and Bouvé faculty already based in Boston. They have plans to make some course options available on campus, particularly when they cover material like regulatory processes unique to Canada.
For Northeastern in Vancouver’s associate dean Carrie Chassels, the choice to bring the MS in Health Informatics program north of the border was a no-brainer.
“The number one labor market need in British Columbia and across Canada is in health care services, and we’re seeing a great need for people with health informatics expertise,” she explained, highlighting the more than $370 billion Canadian provincial and federal governments invest in healthcare initiatives annually. “It serves as a foundation for enabling innovation, efficiency, and enhanced collaboration among healthcare providers across geographic distances, which we have in British Columbia, across Canada, and around the world…the sky’s the limit in terms of opportunities.”
The number one labor market need in British Columbia and across Canada is in health care services, and we’re seeing a great need for people with health informatics expertise
Other peer institutions and BC health authorities including Providence Health Care, Interior Health, and the Provincial Health Services Agency have voiced support for the new program, underlining the community’s sense of urgency around developing skilled health informatics professionals.
In the fall of 2025, the new Health Informatics students will join a well-established campus community that focuses keenly on collaboration across disciplines. Chassels is really looking forward to adding health informatics experts to that interdisciplinary mix.
”We refer to it as an interdisciplinary ecosystem; students across all programs are connected with each other in-person and virtually for events, hackathon competitions, and studio projects, and the faculty also collaborate with each other on research projects that engage students in that interdisciplinary way,” she said. “We’re really generating a positive, dynamic campus community environment where everybody feels that they belong, and that they are going to be supported to succeed in achieving their goals. We’re very proud of that.”
By Madelaine Millar