The Medical Informatics Master’s Programme

Graduates of the following programmes are the target audience:

• Bachelor's programme in medical informatics
• Bachelor's programme in informatics with a focus on medical informatics
• Any other equivalent programme at a recognised domestic or foreign post-secondary academic institution

Graduates of other programmes in informatics may be admitted if they complete additional courses.

Graduates of the Master's Programme acquire a well-founded core competence in informatics, with a special emphasis on the essential methods applied in bioscience, medicine and health care. Depending on their focus, they will acquire the competence that enables them to design, develop and integrate systems into the research or work process, in close cooperation with bioscientists, neuroscientists, physicians or health care specialists.

The Focuses of the Medical Informatics Master’s Programme

The training focuses on practical, research-relevant, medical or clinical problems. An essential element is the imparting of communicative skills to deal with these problems together with scientists of other fields. The environment of the Medical University of Vienna is especially well-suited for that.

In addition to a broad training in solving informatic problems in the medical area graduates will also require deeper skills in one of the following specialisations (“core subject combination”):

• Bioinformatics
• Neuroinformatics
• Public Health Informatics
• Clinical Informatics
• or Informatics for Assistive Technologies

The academic training ensures that graduates are primed for current and future tasks in the field of bio- and neuroscience, medicine and health care and can acquire at any time new methods in medical informatics.

The Structure of the Programme

The programe consists of

1. Mandatory and elective courses at a total of 78 ECTS points
   1. Basics, 18 ECTS
   2. Core subject combination, 24 ECTS
   3. Application subjects, 12 ECTS
   4. Interdisciplinary informatics. 24 ECTS
2. Freely elected coursesm 6 ECTS
3. Diploma seminars, 5 ECTS
4. Master thesis, 30 ECTS
   1. Written thesis, 27 ECTS
   2. Thesis defense, 3 ECTS

A core subject combination serves for specialization in one of the above-mentioned areas and consists of well adjusted sets of modules from the two blocks Application Subjects (providing knowledge and skills pn medical and life science topics) and Interdisciplinary Informatics (containing the respective informatic backgrounds), complemented by a mandatory module devoted to deepening the respective area.

Project studies

Students also have the opportunity to get some course credits (for up to 18 ECTS) by practical work in a larger project instead of taking the respective courses, depending on the availability of appropriate projects and approval by the curriculum director. In particular this provides students with part-time jobs to acquire credits through their professional work, provided such work provides skills that would otherwise be covered in courses.