How We Teach People How To Use Data Formal Informatics Education Many of the early pioneers in health care informatics came from various clinical and technical fields and learned informatics on the job. Formal degree-granting educational programs in health care informatics began in the 1970s with a variety of foci such as health administration, clinical sciences (eg, medicine, nursing, pharmacy), computer science, bioinformatics, and public health. National organizations have begun to develop

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... commendations for health care informatics content in the curricula for various professions. This emphasis on preparing practitioners to address informatics is an outgrowth of recommendations by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies' 2003 report Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality. 8 This report was issued partly in response to the Institute of Medicine's 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, which focused on safety and quality of care. 9 In the 2003 report, the IOM recommended 5 core competencies that all clinicians should possess in order to meet the needs of the 21st century health system. One of those 5 is to utilize informatics to "communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision making using information technology." 10 These recommendations have spawned many educational initiatives directed at health professionals including the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 10x10 Program, the goal of which is to train 10 000 health professionals in basic informatics content by the year 2010. 11 Though AMIA is just beginning to delineate core informatics content for physicians, it has partnered with leading academic informatics programs to deliver the 10x10 continuing education programs and short courses in both clinical and bioinformatics. This initiative is using curricular content from existing informatics training programs, distance learning, and other innovative educational strategies to deliver quality education to busy working professionals. A sample of key content from some of the clinically-oriented 10x10 programs is shown in Table 1 . Several of the content areas address preparation of practitioners for utilizing health data effectively including evidencebased medicine, data mining of databases/ data warehouses, information integration and knowledge management, and data standards. The National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health began funding medical informatics research training programs in the 1990s and currently funds 20 university-based programs. 12 Their goal is to advance the scientific basis underpinning the informatics field by training researchers. Some of these programs provide tuition and even stipends to health professionals