The School of Information (iSchool) at Kent State University is pleased to announce that they have been awarded Initial Accreditation for Seven Years to the Health Informatics Master's Degree program.
On August 22, 2023 the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) voted in favor of accreditation for the program. They informed Kent State President Todd Diacon, Dean of the College of Communication and Information Amy Reynolds and School of Information Director Meghan Harper by letter on September 1, 2023. This makes Kent State one of only two universities in the state to hold this prestigious accreditation and one of the twenty-three online programs that can boast this distinction in the United States.
Director Meghan Harper had this to say about the accreditation: "The process of seeking and receiving CAHIIM Accreditation was a wonderful opportunity to identify strengths in the Health Informatics curriculum and identify continuous improvement goals to ensure that we are preparing students for healthcare workforce needs."
Seeking accreditation for Health Informatics is a voluntary process for an institution and helps ensure the public that the program meets a high educational standard and that this standard will be upheld over time. Accreditation provides the iSchool with professional development opportunities for faculty as well as best practices and benchmarks by which it can keep up with the evolution of the profession and make improvements in the delivery of quality education.
For students, this means they can have confidence that their degrees meet professional standards for employment and that the program reflects the current developments in knowledge and practices in the profession.
The CAHIIM Board of Directors along with the Health Informatics Accreditation Council conducted a comprehensive review of the School of Information's HI program and recognized it as in substantial compliance with nationally established standards. This accreditation is valid for seven years, with the review of the program being held in the 2030-2031 academic year.
CAHIIM is an independent organization that sets policies, procedures and standards for institutions offering degrees in health informatics and health information management. CAHIIM became an independent organization in 2006, but is born out of a long history of related professional organizations dating back to when medical records first became professionally managed in the early twentieth century.