(Course descriptions are not intended as an assurance or warranty of achievement of specific skills or knowledge.)
(Variable hours/week)
3 semesters hours of credit
This course is required if the GRE submitted for admission verbal score is below 640 or if the MAT
score is below 432. If your test scores are above these two thresholds, this course can be waived
with approval. This course will not be used as credit for your degree plan.
Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor
This course assists the student in the area of professional writing, the development of scholarly and academic writing abilities. Each student will complete the process of generating a written document from topic selection through outlining and drafting. Writing in the field of Health Informatics will be addressed and the student will explore the genre of written discourse in informatics.
(Variable hours/week)
1-10 Semester Credits
Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor
This course provides a timely way to examine cutting edge topics of interest to students and Faculty. The varying content may include topics such as: technical writing in Health Informatics comparing knowledge use across disciplines, computational knowledge methods in Health Informatics for example. This course may be repeated as topics vary.
(Variable hours/week)
1-10 Semester Credits
Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor
This course provides a mechanism for students to explore issues of personal interest in the field of Health Informatics. The varying content may include topics such as: display of large scale nursing data, mapping issues for dentistry, linking public health knowledge to clinical medicine. This course may be graded on a letter grade or pass/fail basis and may be repeated as topics vary.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
This introductory graduate level course covers the discipline of informatics in health care delivery and is designed to be multi-disciplinary in nature. The course will focus on the clinical aspects of information technology and provides a broad overview to the nature of information technology, focusing on hardware, software and conceptual models of information. Students will explore different data types and data models, which are specific to their discipline and those, which can be shared across disciplines. The focus will be on comparing and contrasting the data types and data models of the different disciplines.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will focus on the design, implementation and components of Health Care Information Systems. The course will include a history of Health Care Information Systems. This will examine the changing uses and expectations of Health Care Information Systems and the expected usage of Health Care Information Systems at each level of development. The course will explore new options in technology and design, which will allow for the clinically driven Information Systems of the future. The needs of multiple disciplines will be explored to understand how they can share and communicate patient information using Information Systems.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course is an introduction to cognitive science--the interdisciplinary study of mind and behavior from an information processing perspective--and its application to health informatics. The course begins with a basic introduction to human cognition and information processing (both symbolic and connectionist). It then presents a broad survey of the health informatics areas to which cognitive science has been applied. These areas include health problem solving and education, decision support systems, user-centered interfaces, and the design and use of controlled medical terminologies.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will survey the methods of decision-making as applied to health care situations. The course will focus on the major theories of decision-making. In addition to the theories, techniques for the application of the theories will be presented. Decision-making will be discussed in terms of data, which is necessary for informed decision-making and the types of data structures necessary. The relationship between decision-making and the development of Health Care Information Systems will be investigated. The course will investigate some of the legal and ethical aspects of decision-making, related to the decision making by health professionals and the decision making of clients.
(2 hours lectures/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, consent of instructor.
In this course, students will use both relational and object-oriented databases to model aspects of health care delivery. Working in teams, students will analyze a practical problem related to a clinical health care situation and model the necessary information into a data model. Development of the data model will include the use of CASE tools. The data model then will be discussed with health professionals in clinical practice for relevance and accuracy. The feedback from the clinical area will be used to revise both models and to evaluate the development process.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor.
Health Informatics involves rapidly changing technology, which impacts the way in which legal and ethical considerations are understood in our culture. This course will examine the relationships between law and ethics. Particular considerations will be given to the concepts of privacy, autonomy, responsibility and decision-making. These concepts will be discussed from both legal and ethical perspectives. The impact of current and future technology will be discussed as it relates to these concepts and the impact on Health Informatics.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will address security issues as they impact health information systems. Physical security of the hardware and software including redundancy, back up and restricted access will be discussed. Security and appropriateness of access will be addressed in terms of both hardware and software solutions. Data integrity, audit ability and system integrity will be considered along with the unique problems, which result from network access. Solutions to these concerns will be discussed in terms of industry standards, those, which already exist, and those, which are still evolving.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
The purpose of this course is to assist the student in understanding the components, process and tools used in the necessary components of a health information system. The course will focus on the variety of approaches and tools available for systems analysis. Students will have experience with modeling tools and rapid prototyping tools.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course enables students to develop competencies in the object-oriented approach to the design and development of computer applications in health informatics. Students will have the opportunity to apply object-oriented methods in the design, development, production and evaluation of health informatics systems applications. Students will develop object-oriented design documents and complete a course project involving development and production of a prototype computer based health informatics application.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
The course starts at the individual practitioner level with attention to physician, nurse and allied health. Since administration is a critical component of modern health care. At this level, the skills, duties and training requirements for various occupations are covered.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
Why are computers indispensable in banking, but have made relatively little progress in health care outside of financial and scheduling systems? Health informatics is computation on evolved (as opposed to engineered) systems. Unlike engineered systems, evolved systems cannot be neatly divided into components. Therefore, it is difficult to design algorithms that work well in health care. Foundations I am an introductory survey course and am divided into two parts. First we introduce fundamental topics such as information, models, decision analysis, medical computing, standards/ vocabularies and technology evaluation. Second we apply these concepts to specific areas of health informatics including computer-based patient records, patient care/monitoring systems, clinical decision support, public health and consumer informatics, imaging systems, information retrieval and bioinformatics.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course provides an overview of theories and methods that are broadly applicable to all health informaticians. It gives students the theoretical and methodological background needed to pursue study in health informatics. The course begins with theories of information
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course is intended to provide an overview of principles and concepts of information technology with a focus on biomedical applications. The first portion of the course will be an introduction to computing hardware and software including architecture, distributed and parallel computing, operating systems, database concepts, data communications & networking. The rest of the course will focus on applications of IT in biomedicine such as electronic health records, biomedical imaging, and bioinformatics
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course is a survey of research techniques and methods in computational biomedicine. Bioinformatics, biostatistics, biomedical engineering, modeling and simulation of biomedical systems and processes, bio-signal and image analysis, and complex biodynamical systems will be explored from a computational perspective with respect to normal and pathological structure and function of biomedical systems.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Background in at least one quantitative discipline (physics, chemistry, mathematics,
computer science) at college level. Knowledge of at least one programming language. Scientific
curiosity and imagination. Good writing skills. Interest in the crossing of boundaries between traditional
scientific disciplines.
This course is aimed at the applications of modern signal processing techniques in biomedicine. This course covers the basics of biomedical signals including EEG, ECG, EMG and medical imaging, and introduces various widely used signal-processing techniques. This course is for graduate students who are interested in quantitative studies of biological systems.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the basic informatics component
Prerequisites: We will cater both to biological/clinical and quantitatively trained students. A
background in at least one quantitative discipline (physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer
science) at college level with solid background in geometry (ideally: vector calculus) is desirable.
Knowledge of at least one programming language (ideally: C or C++) and UNIX, or willingness to
acquire necessary skills.
This course provides a broad and practical introduction to the major techniques employed in image processing and pattern recognition: dilation and erosion, segmentation and thresholding, denoising, direct space filter kernels, Fourier-based filters, matching and morphing, artificial neural networks, self-organizing maps, principal component analysis. The course will be useful for graduate students in biomedical computing who wish to learn state of the art data in mining and image vision techniques.
3 semester credits/meets part of the basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the Internet, personal computer, and consent of course instructor
This course will provide an overview of learning research from the fields of cognitive science, education, psychology and neuroscience, and how this information can be applied to develop learning environments for the health sciences using current and emerging technologies. The focus of the course will be on the process of applying learning theory and pedagogy to produce targeted learning environments for populations in the health sciences, which may include health professionals, technicians/staff, the general public or patients. Following completion of the course, students will have the opportunity to obtain knowledge and resources to begin designing learning environments that are based on scientific, instructional, and technological research findings.
3 semester credits/meets part of the research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the Internet, personal computer, consent of course instructor
In this course students will be responsible for choosing a health sciences content area around which to build a novel learning environment. Students will work in teams to design, develop, and create a novel learning environment, employing expertise and resources in the UTHSC-H and greater Houston community. The course grading and objectives focus on the group project, it’s design development, and the design and planning of the learning environment evaluation. Students will have the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience in creating learning environments, including the problem solving skills to be successful at this type of interdisciplinary project.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This multi-disciplinary course will focus on the process of evaluating and choosing a health information system. The course will assist the student in identifying the critical needs, which the health information system is to address. Different methods of evaluation will be presented and discussed in terms of how they would apply to health information systems. The evaluation process will begin with identifying the needs of the organization, and presenting them in an organized manner so the vendors can address the needs followed by mechanisms for evaluation.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion/laboratory)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course provides the student the opportunity to develop more advanced competencies in the design, analysis, interpretation and critical evaluation of experimental, quasi-experimental, pre-experimental and qualitative health informatics research and evaluation studies. The student will identify flaws or weaknesses in research and evaluation designs, choose which of several designs most appropriately tests a stated hypothesis or controls variables potentially jeopardizing validity, and analyze and interpret research and evaluation results. Through exposure to the basic ‘building block’ designs, students will have the opportunity to develop the competence to appropriately choose and to use the most important and frequently used design procedures for single or multifactor research or evaluation studies.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion/laboratory)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course provides the student the opportunity to develop basic competencies in the measurement, design, analysis, interpretation and critical evaluation of health information research and evaluation studies. Students will have the opportunity to learn and apply the most important and most frequently used statistical measures and methods, as well as to critically evaluate their appropriate use in health informatics research and evaluation. Topics include the study of frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, variance, hypothesis testing, correlation and both parametric and non-parametric inferential methods including t-tests, analysis of variance, chi-square tests of significance, and tests of measures of association.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course provides the student the opportunity to know when and how to use state of the art data analysis computer software to perform each of a comprehensive set of the most important and frequently used data analysis techniques for research and evaluation in health informatics. The student will choose the most appropriate data analysis tools, to perform qualitative, descriptive, inferential, parametric, non-parametric, multifactor and multivariate techniques as well as graphical data modeling analytic techniques using the computer. Qualitative data analysis and related software will demonstrate alternate methods for data collection and reduction.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course focuses on cognitive engineering techniques for designing user-centered health information systems. Such systems provide appropriate functionality to the user, are easy to use and learn, reduce the chance of user error, and increase user efficiency. The course emphasizes how human cognitive abilities and limitations impose requirements on the design of effective interfaces. It covers the theory and practical application of several cognitive engineering techniques, including cognitive task analysis, verbal protocol analysis, propositional analysis, and cognitive walkthroughs
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
This course is a comprehensive introduction to the methods and tools in computational biomedicine. The course covers the topics including basic statistics (probability, correlation and regression, statistical inference), linear algebra (vectors and matrices, eigenvectors and eigenvalues, determinants), multivariate statistics and information theory. It emphasizes the conceptual understanding and ability to apply these methods and tools to solve biomedical problems.
(Variable hours/week)
1-10 Semester Credits
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
During the practicum, each student will select an area of interest in which to apply the knowledge and skill gained during the didactic courses. Students will become active participants in the work of developing informatics-based applications. Each student will develop a specific set of goals to be accomplished. The student’s advising committee and practicum supervisor must accept these goals. These goals will reflect the student’s area of interest and the needs of the precepting organization. This course is graded on a pass/fail basis and is repeated for a maximum of 6 semester credit hours to meet degree requirements.
(Variable hours/week)
1-10 Semester Credits
Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor
This course provides a timely way to examine cutting edge topics of interest to students and faculty. The varying content may include topics such as: technical writing in health informatics comparing knowledge use across disciplines, computational knowledge methods in health informatics for example. May be repeated as topics vary.
(Variable hours/week)
1-10 Semester Credits
Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor
This course provides a mechanism for students to explore issues of personal interest in the field of Health Informatics. The varying content may include topics such as: display of large scale nursing data, mapping issues for dentistry, linking public health knowledge to clinical medicine. This course may be graded on a letter grade or pass/fail basis. May be repeated as topics vary.
(2 hours lecture /3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will examine advanced concepts in health informatics systems, including mechanisms for linking current information systems with legacy systems; network based information systems, community health information systems (CHINs) and communication among disparate information systems. Topics will include identifiers; electronic data interchange systems and new models of information systems. Emphasis will be given to issues of how computational knowledge techniques affect the kind and type of knowledge displayed. Automation of knowledge reorganization as it is transferred among disciplines and settings will be discussed.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will examine the evaluation and design of information displays for healthcare. The course will focus on three areas: (1) theories and methodologies for the evaluation of information displays, (2) techniques and tools for generating effective information displays through visualization, (3) how the formats of information displays affect decision making in healthcare.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion/laboratory)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course first covers in depth the methods and techniques for knowledge modeling and engineering in healthcare. This includes an introduction on how to conduct a task analysis, and how to collect and analyze domain knowledge gathered from reference sources or expert behavior. The course will cover how these methods and techniques are used to construct health informatics systems that are more robust, more helpful, and easier to use than systems engineered without these techniques. Also covered are various techniques for evaluating the accuracy and effectiveness of the constructed systems from experimental data. The students also have an opportunity to engineer knowledge models using connectionist representations. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on how knowledge engineering is used to design decision support tools, tutoring systems, and educational improvements for health informatics. In the second part of the course, students are given a knowledge engineering task in a healthcare area for which they must develop a knowledge model and then construct and evaluate a knowledge-based system.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, consent of instructor
The course will provide an overview of telehealth in the context of the general health care system. It will survey the application of telehealth in various medical specialties and different settings, e.g., rural, military/aerospace and corrections. The course will identify key issues in implementing and operating a telehealth program including technology, economics, legal/ethical, training, protocol development, and evaluation.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
Health Informatics requires that practitioner’s work closely with others in developing health informatics based interventions. The interventions can include determining the nature and type of system that needs to be developed, an understanding of what is involved in the delivery of care and understanding the social and political aspects of change within an organization. This course will describe the nature of the consultation role; explore the options and strategies available to consultants that can make the consultant role more efficient.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
The implementation of information systems will not only greatly enhance the quality of healthcare but also radically change the nature of healthcare. This course will look at healthcare as a distributed system composed of groups of people interacting with each other and with information technology. Two major areas will be covered in the course. The first area is computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), which is defined as computer-assisted coordinated activity such as reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, routine tasks, and communication carried out by a group of collaborating individuals who interact with complex information technology. Most health information systems (such as EMR) are large groupwares that support large numbers of synchronous and asynchronous users with diverse background in the executions of many different types of tasks. The second area is the social impact of information technology. This area will focus on the impact of internet on healthcare, such as the functions and impacts of virtual communities, online health groups, and tele-healthcare through the web.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
The purpose of this course is to examine the taxonomies currently used in health care. The structure of individual taxonomies will be discussed and evaluated. Students will have the opportunity to compare the relationships between different taxonomies from different disciplines to determine where there are similarities and differences in the assumption, design and execution of the various taxonomies. The taxonomies will be examined in terms of meta-level taxonomies such as UMLS (Unified Medical Language System) and SNOMED-III (Systematic Nomenclature of Medicine Version III). This will allow students to examine how well phenomena of health care are related in the existing taxonomies. Such a study will give students insight into the implications of the use of existing taxonomies in electronic records and electronic categorization schema. Such insight will demonstrate the strengths and limitations of the existing systems as well as point to directions where future work needs to be done. The course will have a particular focus on the ability of current taxonomies to communicate knowledge across disciplinary lines to improve patient -centered healthcare.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
In this course, students identify a real-world medical or health-related task or problem that might be improved through the use of cognitive engineering techniques. Once identified, students will have the opportunity to apply the techniques and then use the results to outline appropriate ways to improve behavior on the task or to rectify the problem. The course is designed to permit an in-depth study of cognitive engineering techniques through their application to real-world health informatics problems.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
Current technology is giving the consumer greater access to health information than at any time in the past. Information is available from federal agencies, volunteer organizations, consumer services and direct consumer-to-consumer communications. The availability of information with varying degrees of quality is changing the way consumers think about their own health as well as changing the relationship between consumers and providers. Students will explore the impact of this technology, consider the directions which the current technology might head and explore the potentials of future technology on the delivery of healthcare. This is a research course and students will be expected to complete a research project that contributes to our understanding of consumer health informatics.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course covers topics of user interface design for health information systems, medical devices, consumer health web sites, and other healthcare related systems. Students will have the opportunity to learn the fundamental principles of human-computer interaction and human factors and learn how to apply them to real world problems through class projects. The focus is on learning why user friendly interfaces can greatly improve work productivity and enhance the quality of healthcare without radically changing the underlying technology.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
In this course, students identify a medical or health-related task that might be improved through the use of a decision-support system, intelligent tutoring system, or educational intervention. Once identified, students conduct a task analysis and design an appropriate knowledge engineering project plan to develop and implement a knowledge-based system for this task. They then have the opportunity to evaluate the resulting system and outline appropriate ways to improve human performance on the task through the use of the system.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will focus on decisions made with high degrees of uncertainty. The focus will be on modeling the decisions and the types of uncertainty which are present in the decision making process. The focus will be on developing ways to reduce the amount and types of uncertainty while still maintaining the key elements of the decision making process. In addition, the course will focus on ways to automate the decision making process in terms of the way in which data, information and knowledge is aggregated, the modeling of the decision data against existing standards or protocols and presenting alternative display approaches to the understanding of the data, information and knowledge employed in the decision making process.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
This is an introduction to Project management that is structured for students who have begun to run their own projects. This is project based to develop managers for large healthcare projects. These projects can include a system implementation, evaluation of an existing system, or other large project.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of basic informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course provides the advanced skills necessary to write a full range of scientific manuscripts in health informatics. It begins with the philosophy of science, types of scientific research, and types of scientific manuscripts (including review, applied, and research articles). The course then examines each component of a scientific manuscript in detail, including the title, abstract, introduction, literature review, method, discussion, conclusion, and appendices. The course covers the purpose of each of these components, discusses properties that distinguish good components from bad, and presents techniques for producing high quality scientific writing. Students will apply these techniques by examining selected published papers, producing their own scientific writing, and critiquing the writing of others in the class. Students are expected to enter the class with a draft scientific paper that they have written and a high degree of general writing skill.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Undergraduate course work in differential and integral calculus, course work in
biomedical sciences, computer science or programming courses, graduate standing, and consent
of instructor.
This course will introduce the student to the use of applied computational science in bioinformatics. The course will present theories, algorithms and computer-based methods and applications for understanding biological structures and processes such as DNA, the genome, and protein sequences.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, consent of instructor, and admission to
the doctoral program
Application of computational theories, algorithms and methods to issues and problems of the student’s choice under the guidance of the faculty. This course focuses on the solution of biomedical problems using computational approaches and methods. Students will select appropriate methodology to solve their assigned problem(s), apply them and if applicable compare results between different methods. Evaluation of success will include determining applicability to similar classes of problems and how to address the solution in a practical setting.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
In this course selected topics in computational biomedicine, based on students’ interests, will be studied in depth. The focus will be on how different computational approaches can be applied to study any single biomedical problem. Among the topics covered will include machine learning, pattern learning, data mining and computational modeling, in biomedicine and bioinformatics.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
Recent advances in genomic technologies, especially the microarray/gene chips technology enable biologists to generate large amount of complex data. To explore the meaning of the data, one needs sophisticated data mining algorithms and tools. This course is intended to explore different problems and methods in bioinformatics with focus on the computational and data mining methods for complex data such as microarray data. A set of basic computational methods and models for analyzing genomic and structural biological data from high throughput technologies will be introduced. Students will be required to complete mini projects on some of the methods.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer and consent of instructor.
This course introduces the ideas and methods used in simulating cognitive and perceptual processes using computational models based on the neural networks of the brain. In other words, this course teaches cognitive neuroscience (understanding how the brain gives rise to thought) using computer models as a tool. These models provide a computational bridge between behavioral and biological levels of analysis. A range of cognitive phenomena, including perception, attention, memory, priming, language, and higher-level cognition (“executive” control, planning, etc) will be examined. Students are required to develop a non-trivial computational model of a cognitive process they select.
Prerequisites: We will cater both to biological and quantitatively trained students. A background in at least one quantitative discipline (physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science) at college level with solid background in geometry (ideally: vector calculus) is desirable. Knowledge of at least one programming language (ideally: C or C++) and UNIX, or willingness to acquire necessary skills.
This course introduces computational algorithms and data processing strategies used in modern biophysics and structural biology. The emphasis is on the algorithmic foundation and development of software fragments that may assist students in future research projects in computational biology. The course covers topics such as fast Fourier transform, computational geometry, diffraction theory, optics, and digital signal processing. The application of these methods in crystallography and image analysis of biological specimens is discussed.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of the advanced informatics component
Prerequisites: Background in at least one quantitative discipline (physics, chemistry, mathematics,
computer science) at college level. Knowledge of at least one programming language. Scientific
curiosity and imagination. Good writing skills. Interest in the crossing of boundaries between traditional
scientific disciplines.
This course provides a broad and practical introduction to the major techniques employed in the computational modeling of biological structures: computational chemistry, molecular dynamics, normal mode analysis, Monte Carlo simulations, electrostatics, and conformational analysis. The course will be useful for graduate students in the pharmaceutical and medical disciplines that wish to model the physical and chemical properties of biological structures.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
This course will combine quantitative and qualitative methods into an integrated research approach. Much of the innovative research in Health Informatics requires that students be involved in the design and measurement of studies where reliable and valid measures do not exist for all concepts and constructs. Both methodological approaches can be combined to give insights that would not be possible from either method alone. The course will explore the methodological assumptions, the applications and the software, which can support triangulation methods.
(Variable hours /week)
1-9 Semester Credits
Required for doctoral students
Prerequisites: Admission to the doctoral program
The student will use this course to develop a pilot study to design the instrument that will be used in the data collection for the dissertation. The student must complete 9 semester credit hours with the supervision of the mentor or primary advisor. The study with the data will be used to prepare the advance to candidacy proposal.
(Variable hours/week)
1-21 Semester Credits
Required for doctoral students
Prerequisites: Advanced to candidacy exam successfully completed.
The doctoral candidate must complete 21 hours of research in health informatics. The mentor or primary advisor will supervise the advancement of the candidate’s progress.
(1-hour lecture/discussion)
Post Doctoral Students will explore various mechanisms and processes that will enhance their development to become a faculty member at an institution of higher education. The topics will include but not limited to: salary negotiation, start up package negotiation, grant preparation, promotion and tenure expectations, and publication expectations. This course is required for the Post Doctoral Certificate program.
(1 hour lecture/demonstration/discussion)
Required for doctoral program. May be repeated for 3 hours to meet the degree requirement.
(2 hour discussion)
Post Doctoral Fellows will work with their mentor to learn the process of managing and conducting a research project. This may include project management skills, proposal writing, and specific professional or scientific skills needed for a particular research project. This course is required for the Post Doctoral Certificate program. This course may be repeated each semester that the Post Doc is in the certificate program.
(2 hours lecture/3 hours laboratory/week lecture/demonstration/discussion)
3 Semester Credits/meets required course for the doctoral degree.
Prerequisites: Access to the internet, personal computer, and consent of instructor
Students will develop skills in the planning and execution of grant development. The focus will be on NIH and NSF grants forms, but students will also be exposed to grant applications from private organizations. The focus of the course will be to develop a draft, which can be used for the funding of dissertation work, or to develop a grant, which would allow them to continue their dissertation work in a post-dissertation award. Students will learn how to write the narrative, project time lines, include appropriate evaluation and draft budgets.
(Variable hours)
Required for the doctoral program. May be repeated for 9 hours to meet the degree requirement.