Sample Syllabus


Catalog Description: This course integrates computer science and health informatics.  It is the capstone course for students in the service-oriented computing program who choose the health informatics application domain.  The course covers the history of health informatics, including discussions of protocols and standards such as OSI, UDEF and HL7, review of information access and evaluation, health care terminology and health care economics, and looks at system selection and evaluation in the areas of telemedicine, dental informatics, consumer health informatics, and hospital/clinical informatics.  Special attention is given to web services and mobile computing as they relate to the health care industry. The course includes extensive readings and an implementation-based feasibility study for a client-based scenario.

Textbook(s)

[SC] Biomedical Informatics: Computer applications in HealthCare and Biomedicine. E. H. Shortliffe and J. J. Cimino (eds.).  New York: Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 2006, ISBN: 0-387-28986-0


Week-By-Week

Week
 Topics Covered
 Reading
 Assignments
1
 Introduction to Health Informatics and its history.
 [SC] Ch. 1.

“Health Information systems – past, present, future,” International Journal of Medical Informatics, 75(3-4), 268-281.
2
 Overview of types of systems in HI, system design and HCI factors, review of web services.
 Colera, E. (2003), “Interaction Design Theory,” International Journal of Medical Informatics, 69, 205-22.
3
 Applications of web services and mobile computing in HI scenarios.
 Fischer et al (2003), “Handheld Computing in Medicine,” Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, 10, 139-149.
 Requirements Acquisition
4
 Protocols and standards for health informatics: OSI stack, HL7, UDEF.
 Chute, C. G. (2000), “Clinical Classification and Terminology: Some History and Current Observations,” Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, 7, 298-303.
5
 Decision Support Systems.  Types of knowledge and knowledge representation formalism.  Probabilistic reasoning.  Knowledge discovery and data mining.  Image databases.
 Fiesch, M., Dufour, J. C., et al. (2003) “Medical Decision Support Systems: Old Dilemmas and New Paradigms?”, Methods of Information in Medicine, 42(3), 190-8.
 Design Review
6
 Health system integration.
 [SC] Ch. 7, 8, & 13.
7
 System evaluation for health informatics.  Issues of knowledge management, legacy systems, distributed expertise, and access control.
 [SC] Ch. 11
8
 Interdisciplinary and international standards: network protocols and legislative issues (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley).
 [SC] Ch. 9 & 15.

HIMSS Standard Activities Task Force (2006), “Harmonizing Standards for Health Information Exchange,” Chicago: HIMSS.
 Usability Analysis
9
 Security and Privacy Issues.
 Simons, W. W., Mandl, K. D., and Kohane, I. S. (2005), “The PING Personally Controlled Electronic Medical Record System: Technical Architecture,: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 12(1), 47-54.

Dhen, E. S., Mendonca, E. A., et al. (2003) “PalmCIS: A Wireless Handheld Application for satistying clinician Information Needs,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: M1387.
10
 Economic impact of HI systems.  What is e-health?
 [SC] Ch. 23 & 24.

Barnes, G. A. and Uncapher, M. (2000), “Getting to e-Health: The Opportunities for Using IT in the Health Care Industry, ITAA.
11
 Social and Ethical Issues.
 [SC] Ch. 10

Kluge, E. (2000), “Professional codes for electronic HC record protection: ethical, legal, economic and structural issues,” International Journal of Medical Informatics, 60(2), 85-96.
12
 Case studies of existing systems.
 Cao, P., Hashiba, M., et al. (2003), “An Integrated Medical Image Database and Retrieval System Using a Web Application Server,” International Journal of Medical Informatics, 71, 51-5.
13
 Research frontiers.

14
 Project presentations.
Progress Report