(Course descriptions are not intended as an assurance or warranty of achievement of specific skills or knowledge.)
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisite: Consent of 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, and computational knowledge methods in h ealth informatics. This course may be repeated as topics vary.
1-9 semester credit hours
Prerequisite: Consent of 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
The course is designed to provide an overview of the US healthcare system for a) students without any healthcare background and b) students with a healthcare background in a foreign country. It deals with the components of providing care, such as patients, different levels of healthcare providers, locations of care and special populations/circumstances. Financing, regulation and reform of healthcare are also discussed. Current topics of interest, for example translational research and the role of health information technology in healthcare reform, may be included. Students will review a webinar on a topic, participate in Q/A, complete field activities, and write reports for discussion as a class the following week.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
The course is a one-semester graduate level course that examines the process of using an object-oriented programming (OOP) language to building computer applications in support of health care and/or life science practice or research. Students learn modern principles of program design and implementation that enable rapid application development through reusable code modules. Students are exposed to fundamental data structures used to implement algorithms as computer programs. The course examines the structure of well-known algorithms, paying careful attention to differentiate between algorithms and programs that implement algorithms. A brief overview of the analysis of algorithms for computability is undertaken. Students develop applications of limited scope to implement algorithms in support of health care or life science processes that arise from practice and/or research. The applications will illustrate the OOP principles of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Python (2.4.3) is the current course programming language, chosen because of its prevalence of use in the bioinformatics community and because it is open source software.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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), 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5007
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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course provides an overview of topics, concepts, theories and methods that form the foundations of health information sciences. It gives students the fundamental knowledge and skills to pursue further study in health informatics. Foundations I presents a general framework for health information science as the construction and use of symbolic, mathematical, and computational models for solving problems throughout the range of biomedical science, from genetics, to clinical care, to public health. It covers concepts, theories and methods that deal with how biomedical information is acquired, discovered, represented, managed, organized, communicated, retrieved, and processed. It also provides an overview of the primary research and application areas in health information science.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: HI 5310 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 h ealth informatics. The course begins with theories of information from computational, philosophical, mathematical, logical and biomedical perspectives.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
This course is designed to provide informatics students with an overview of the key concepts regarding implementation of a clinically-oriented information system (e.g., an electronic medical record, computer-based provider order entry). The course will examine how health data are collected, how they are used and the impact of electronic records on the health data. The course will review standards, standards development, languages used, and issues related to information processing I healthcare. The course will review the impact of electronic records on health and healthcare including, legal, financial and clinical design issues
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Basic statistics knowledge, HI 5315, HI 5303, HI 6311, and consent of instructor
This course will focus on methods and processes to evaluate positive and negative impacts of various techniques, technologies and interventions in healthcare. The focus will be standard approaches for measuring various outcomes, and development and evaluation of technology assessment models. The course will also focus on merging multiple measures outcomes measurement to conduct unified approach to evaluate effectiveness of planned / implemented technologies, or to compare different options. Finally, the course will try to explore tool/software for the technology assessment. In this course, "Technology in Healthcare" will be used in a very broad sense, encompassing all interventions, equipment, treatment, etc., that are used in the health care field to care for consumers.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Basic statistics knowledge and consent of instructor
This graduate level introductory course provides an overview to healthcare quality from the view of information science and the discipline of informatics. It takes a patient centered approach that covers the complexities of quality and the scientific basis for understanding the measurement and improvement of quality, considers the macro- and micro- levels of systems involved in quality measurement and improvement, as well as the organizational environments that are used to deliver care. It provides the learner with a framework for key theories and concepts, and models of quality improvement.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: HI 5340 and consent of instructor
This graduate level introductory course provides an overview to healthcare quality from the view of information science and the discipline of informatics. It takes a patient centered approach that covers the complexities of quality and the scientific basis for understanding the measurement and improvement of quality, considers the macro- and micro- levels of systems involved in quality measurement and improvement, as well as the organizational environments that are used to deliver care. It provides the learner with a framework for key theories and concepts, and models of quality improvement.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Consent of 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 credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: HI 5340 and consent of 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 UTHealth and greater Houston community. The course grading and objectives focus on the group project, its 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: 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 that 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5302 or 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
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course will introduce foundation knowledge of Public Health Informatics. In this course students will explore how information sciences and computer sciences can be applied to enhance public health practice, research and education. Content will include current standards, databases, networks, information systems and technologies applied to public health. In addition, this course will cover national and regional initiative and legal aspect of public health informatics. Students will gain hands-on experience by involvement in team projects. The projects will explore a specific problem domain seeking to critically analyze and propose practical solutions.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course introduces practical methods and techniques used in Public Health Informatics (PHI). The course will focus on methods for evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of public health protection and delivery. The course modules are organized into three domain knowledge of PHI methods: 1) Legal and Policy Framework of Public Health Informatics, 2) GIS and Spatial Analysis, and 3) Evaluation and Knowledge Management of Public Health Informatics. The course is designed to familiarize students with methods for addressing the core concepts and issues confronting public health practitioners and researchers in planning, implementation and evaluation of information systems.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
The Public Health Informatics Synthesis Course provides an opportunity for students to practical, hands-on cumulating knowledge and experiences in Public Health Informatics. This project should reflect a substantial effort and competency of synthesis in informatics developed through the course training that address core competencies of public health informatics system by working through the problem of the student’s choice. The selected problem should be discussed and approved by a faculty mentor. This should be tied to research/practice of a student’s interest that includes one or more didactic modules covered in the prior courses. The synthesis project should be based upon the combined efforts of (online) library database search, fieldwork, and mentored research approved by mentor(s). Expectations of the class should include the presentation of the conclusions from the project in a written manner for academic dissemination as a conference abstract, poster
1-6 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course provides the advanced skills necessary to write a full range of business documents, including letters, memos, emails, technical and non-technical user guides, training documentation, system documentation and application tip sheets, as well as policy, governance, and decision briefs. The reason for and appropriate uses of each of these types of documents will be examined. There will also be an introduction to scientific writing, which will be compared and contrasted with business writing. Students will also learn to evaluate literature and evidence for publication bias and appropriateness. 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 business or scientific writing. Students will apply these techniques by examining selected documents and published papers, producing their own writing, and critiquing the writing of others in class.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisite: Consent of 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 or computational knowledge methods in health informatics. May be repeated as topics vary.
1-9 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics component (variable hours/week)
Prerequisite: Consent of 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: HI 5301 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
This course will examine the evaluation and design of information displays for health care. 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; and (3) How the formats of information displays affect decision making in health care.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
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, law/ethics, training, protocol development, and evaluation.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: 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 and explore the options and strategies available to consultant that can make the consultant role more efficient.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
The implementation of information systems will not only greatly enhance the quality of health care but also radically change the nature of health care. This course will look at health care 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 backgrounds 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 the Internet on health care, such as the functions and impacts of virtual communities, online health groups, and tele-health care through the web.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
The purpose of this course is to examine the role of information representation, controlled vocabularies and knowledge engineering constructs such as ontologies in conceptualization, design and implementation of modern health information systems. The course will introduce approaches for representing information and knowledge in a distributed network of health information systems. Moving beyond a general understanding of taxonomies, students will gain an understanding of the conceptual foundations of ontologies, including the limitations of the modern systems. Knowledge modeling and engineering principals will be introduced through lectures, hands-on practice and the class project. This will include the design, construction and use of ontologies in health care applications. Through hands-on experience, students will gain insight into the strengths and limitations of the existing resources, approaches and systems as well as point to directions where future work needs to be done.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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 required to complete a research project that contributes to a broader understanding of consumer health informatics.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: 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 that 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This is an introduction to project management structured for students who have begun to run their own projects, and 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course provides the advanced skills necessary to write a full range of scientific manuscripts in health informatics. The course 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.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisites: HI 6302 and consent of instructor
This course will focus on an understanding of the different forms of knowledge used in biomedical informatics. Based on the type of knowledge, where the knowledge. This course will focus on an understanding of the different forms of knowledge used in biomedical informatics. Based on the type of knowledge, where the knowledge is located and how the knowledge is structured, the course will examine different methods to acquire that knowledge from the people and/or repositories that contain the knowledge. The course will examine strategies to validate that knowledge and to create a repository for that knowledge. A more detailed understanding of the repository can be found in HI 6302 Knowledge Modeling I.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5313 or consent of instructor
This course is designed to provide informatics students with an in-depth overview of the key concepts regarding implementation of a clinically-oriented information system (e.g., an electronic medical record, computer-based provider order entry, nursing 5). The course will strive to present "best practices" in cases which there is evidence to support such assertions. The course will rely heavily upon the published literature as well as the experience of the instructors.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics component
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
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 a 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 small projects on some of the methods.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Prerequisites: 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 that can support triangulation methods.
1-9 semester credit hours
Required for doctoral students
Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral program
The student will use this course to develop a research proposal that will be used as a basis for their doctoral dissertation. The student must complete nine semester credit hours with the supervision of the mentor or primary advisor. The result will be used to prepare for the advance to candidacy exam.
1-21 semester credit hours (variable hours/week)
Required for doctoral students
Prerequisite: Advance 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 semester credit hour
Lecture contact hours: 1
Required for doctoral students; must be repeated for 3 hours to meet the degree requirement.
This course involves the weekly research seminars in which both invited speakers and students present their work to an audience of SBMI affiliates. Students participating in the course for credit are required to both give a seminar presentation, attend at least 80% of the weekly seminars, and fill out evaluation forms (available online). Each student seminar must be supervised by a faculty member (not necessarily the student's advisor). The faculty member will work with students to ensure that the seminars are both appropriate and interesting for the audience.
2 semester credit hour
Required for post-doctoral students
Post-Doctoral students 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 doctoral student is in the certificate program.
3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics component
Required for doctoral students
Prerequisites: 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 goal of the course is to enable students to develop a draft that can be used for the funding of dissertation work or to develop a grant that would allow students 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.
1-9 semester credit hours (variable hours)
Required for doctoral students; may be repeated for 9 hours to meet the degree requirement
The following courses (starting with HIT-) are offered for the Master of Science in Applied Health Informatics program. In general, the course work in the Master of Science in Applied Health Informatics program is not transferable to the Master of Science in Health Informatics or the Doctor of Philosophy in Health Informatics unless the courses are cross-listed or are approved by the student’s advisor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
(Variable hours/week)
1-3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
Description: 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 and/or applying informatics science and skills to address an information management need. Each student will develop a specific set of goals to be accomplished. The student’s advising committee and practicum supervisor must approve these goals. These goals will reflect the student’s area of interest and the needs of the organization. This course is graded on a pass/fail basis and is repeated for a maximum of six semester credit hours to meet degree requirements.
(Variable hours/week)
1-3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of 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, etc. This course may be repeated as topics vary.
(Variable hours/week)
1-3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of 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, and 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.
3 semester credit hours
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 specific to their discipline and those that can be shared across disciplines. The focus will be on comparing and contrasting the data types and data models of the different disciplines.
This course is cross-listed with HI 5300.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course will present a survey of the modern American health care system. The course will focus on the major pieces of legislation that serve as the foundation of the current US health care structures. Topics in the course will include Medicare, Medicaid, and HIPAA, their impacts on financing, health care access and professional roles. The course will integrate current legislative actions, public concerns, implications, and discussions surrounding healthcare reform.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course will combine theoretical and practical exploration of communication within healthcare, including standard data (ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM, CPT etc), data interchange (HIEs) and other standards for health communication. The course will also examine the communication patterns of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers, and the implications of these patterns in the context of information technologies. The course will examine the standard languages that each discipline has adopted, and the informal language that they use when communicating to and about each other. This focus on language will be the entry point to understanding the culture of healthcare and healthcare workers. In addition, students will learn and practice interpersonal communication skills and formal communication skills with the use of PowerPoint etc.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course will focus on the social and technical aspects of safety and security in healthcare. While there is much public focus on the technical aspects of privacy and security, social practices and behaviors are often the ‘weak link’ in the security chain. Students will explore the strengths and weaknesses, from both the technical and social aspects, of different password structures, biomorphic identification, and automated security systems. The goal of the course is to find the optimal combination that can be incorporated into the workflow of specific organizations. The rest will be a ‘best fit’ security solution.
This course is cross-listed with HI 5306.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: 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. Students will examine the changing uses and expectations of health care information systems and the expected usage of such 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 clinical disciplines will be explored to understand how they can share and communicate patient information using information systems.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
The purpose of this course is to assist the student in understanding the components, processes 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.
This course is cross-listed with HI 5307.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: 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 that the health information system is intended 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.
This course is cross-listed with HI 5350.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course is an introduction to project management that is structured for students who have begun to run their own projects. The course is project-based and is designed to develop managers for large healthcare projects, such as a system implementation, evaluation of an existing system, or other large project.
This course is cross-listed with HI 6312.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
This course is based upon the premise that implementation of information systems will not only greatly enhance the quality of healthcare but also radically change the nature of healthcare. The students will examine 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 coordination of activities such as reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, routine tasks, and communication. CSCW involves a group of collaborating individuals who interact with complex information technology. Most health information systems (such as EHR) are examples of large groupware. Groupware supports large numbers of synchronous and asynchronous users of diverse backgrounds as they execute many different types of tasks. The second area is the social impact of information technology. This area will focus on the impact of Internet, social networking, and similar innovations on healthcare.
This course is cross-listed with HI 5305.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
Students in this course will learn how to identify and assess different aspects of healthcare systems and healthcare workflow. The addition of a comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) is very disruptive to the workflow and organization of a primary care provider. It is suggested that EHR decreases the throughput of a primary care clinic. However, if properly designed, an EHR can improve the quality of the healthcare delivered and increase satisfaction of clinicians and patients. Students will learn the skills needed to assess and help improve workflow and the quality of healthcare delivery.
3 semester credit hours
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
Unlike much of the world, healthcare standards are frequently developed by private organizations rather than the government. The Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) create an alphabet soup of organizations that are often not well known to people within healthcare, let alone those just entering healthcare. This course will explore the history of a variety of SDOs, examining their membership and focus domain. Students will examine the role of the major SDOs and their impact on the structure and function of healthcare delivery in the US. The relationship between US and International Standards Organizations will be reviewed.