Skip to Content
SBMI Horizontal Logo

Course Descriptions
2014-2016 Student Handbook


(Course descriptions are not intended as an assurance or warranty of achievement of specific skills or knowledge.)

HI 5001 Special Topics in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies

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.

Back to Top

HI 5004 Introduction to Clinical Health Care

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: 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 U.S. health care structures. Topics in the course will include Medicare, Medicaid and HIPAA, their impacts on health care payment systems, health care access and professional roles. The course will integrate current legislative actions, public concerns, implications, and discussions surrounding health care reform. The meaningful use of electronic health records and its impact on health care delivery will be explored.

Back to Top

HI 5007 Data Structures and Algorithms in Biomedicine

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor

This course is one of the core competency courses for biomedical informatics at SBMI. It is tailored for those students who would like to solidify or further develop their computer science and programming skills necessary for their biomedical informatics graduate program studies. We will use Python as a vehicle to study essential concepts and skills in data structures and algorithms, and their applications in biomedical informatics. Access to a computer is required and students should expect a reasonable amount of programming assignments. By the end of the semester students should have obtained a solid foundation and necessary computer science skills to tackle challenging problems in biomedical informatics.

Back to Top

HI 5300 Introduction to Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

This introductory graduate-level course covers the discipline of informatics in health care delivery and is designed to be multidisciplinary 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. Students will be oriented to the various health informatics professional organizations, learn about the entire health information ecosystem and the interrelationships between the component parts of a system, as well as the importance of health information systems within the larger health care delivery system.

Back to Top

HI 5301 The U.S. Health Care System

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

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 U.S. 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 health care reform.

Back to Top

HI 5302 Cognitive Science in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

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.

Back to Top

HI 5304 Advanced Database Concepts in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
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 will be discussed with health professionals in clinical practice for relevance and accuracy. The feedback from the clinical area will be used to the models and to evaluate the development process.

Back to Top

HI 5305 Legal and Ethical Aspects of Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Web-based instruction

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 in the policy and regulatory arena. The impact of current and future technology, such as patient portals and social media, will be discussed as it relates to these concepts and the impact on health informatics.

Back to Top

HI 5306 Security for Health Information Systems

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

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, such as the hacking of implantable devices, wired, wireless, and cellular networks, as well as the challenges of personally owned devices. Solutions to these concerns will be discussed in terms of industry standards, those that already exist, and those that are still evolving. Compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule, including the requirement for an annual risk analysis, will be covered. Students will write and evaluate policies, analyze security regulations, and conduct a mock risk analysis.

Back to Top

HI 5310 Foundations of Health Information Sciences I

3 semester credit hours/meets part of foundations competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Web-based and classroom instruction

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.

Back to Top

HI 5311 Foundations of Health Information Sciences II

3 semester credit hours/meets part of foundations competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5310

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.

Back to Top

HI 5313 Introduction to Electronic Health Records

3 semester credit hours/meets part of basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Web-based instruction
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, usability and issues related to information processing in health care. The course will review the impact of electronic records and patient portals on health and health care including, legal, financial, and clinical design issues. Challenges encountered during training and go-live will be discussed. Students will receive hands-on experience with an electronic health record in the training environment.

Back to Top

HI 5314 Technology Assessment in Health Care

3 semester credit hours/meets part of basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction
Prerequisites: Basic statistics knowledge, HI 5315, 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 health care. 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 the effectiveness of planned / implemented technologies, or to compare different options. Finally, the course will explore tools/software for the technology assessment. In this course, "Technology in Health care" 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.

Back to Top

HI 5315 Quality and Outcome Improvement in Health Care

3 semester credit hours/meets part of basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction
Prerequisite: Basic statistics knowledge

This introductory course provides an overview to health care 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, including exposure to multiple measures from a variety of organizations and measure comparison sites such as Medicare Compare. It provides the learner with a framework for key theories and concepts and models of quality improvement. Students will be introduced to health information technology safety issues, including tools for operationalizing HIT safety. Learners will be introduced to data quality, the challenges of data from devices and e-quality measures, as well as experience the challenge of calculating quality measures with data from the EHR. The merging of quality outcomes with evolving reimbursement paradigms and models will be examined.

Back to Top

HI 5327 Standards in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

Unlike much of the world, American health care 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 health care, let alone those just entering the field . 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 health care delivery in the United States. The relationship between U.S. and international standards organizations will be reviewed.

Back to Top

HI 5328 Systems Analysis and Project Management

3 semester credit hours /meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

This course is an introduction to both systems analysis and project management. The student will have the opportunity to learn more about the approaches and tools available for systems analysis. Additionally, the student will learn more about the roles, responsibilities, and duties of a project manager. Moreover, the student will learn project management methods and the core activities of a project manager as well as the tools and techniques required to ensure the success of a large health care information technology project such as the implementation of a system or the evaluation of an existing system. Specific emphasis will be on training and support during go-live, total costing of projects, and explicit change management techniques.

Back to Top

HI 5329 Assessment and Evaluation

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based Instruction

Students in this course will learn how to identify and assess different aspects of health care systems and health care workflow as well as how to evaluate a health information system. Students will learn the skills needed to assess and help improve workflow and the quality of health care delivery, with a special emphasis on optimization after implementation. Students will also be introduced to different methods of evaluation and how they would apply to health information systems, as well as the use of health information systems themselves.

Back to Top

HI 5330 Introduction to Bioinformatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of basic informatics competencies
Web-based and classroom instruction

The course gives a comprehensive entry-level introduction to bioinformatics. It covers a wide variety of topics in bioinformatics, including but not limited to sequence analysis, protein structure, genome analysis, database and transcription profiling. Two major goals are 1) to help students understand the scope, basic concepts and theory of bioinformatics; and 2) to become familiar with tools for bioinformatics-related data analysis. Programming skills are not necessary. A laptop computer is necessary if students want to practice with bioinformatics software and tools in class.

Back to Top

HI 5351 Research Design and Evaluation in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
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 use the most important and frequently used design procedures for single or multifactor research or evaluation studies.

Back to Top

HI 5352 Statistical Methods in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

This course provides the student the opportunity to develop essential competencies in the measurement, design, analysis, interpretation and critical evaluation of health, information, and behavioral science 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 critically evaluate their appropriate use. Topics include the study of frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, variance, hypothesis testing, correlation and both parametric and nonparametric inferential methods including t-tests, analysis of variance, chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney, and Wilcoxon tests of significance, as well as tests of measures of association.

Back to Top

HI 5353 Health Informatics Data Analysis

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5351 or HI 5352 or 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.

Back to Top

HI 5354 Cognitive Engineering in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 5360 Clinical Decision Support Systems

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

This course is designed to provide an overview of decision support systems in health care, with a particular emphasis on design, evaluation and application of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) across all health care settings - inpatient, ambulatory care, long-term care, pharmacy, etc. The course explores the background and features of CDSS. Students will understand the mathematical foundations of knowledge-based systems, learn to identify areas which might benefit from a decision support system, evaluate the challenges surrounding development and implementation and consider issues of CDSS appropriateness and usability. The course also includes a detailed discussion of issues in clinical vocabularies and other important issues in the development and use of CDSS, and provides guidance on the use of decision support tools for patients. Students will have hands-on experience with EHR CDSS modification.

Back to Top

HI 5371 Business and Technical Writing

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies

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.

Back to Top

HI 5380 Principles and Foundations of Public Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

This course will introduce foundation knowledge of public health informatics (PHI). 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 initiatives and legal aspects 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.

Back to Top

HI 5381 Methods in Public Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the basic informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

This course introduces practical methods and techniques used in 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 PHI; 2) GIS and spatial analysis; and 3) Evaluation and knowledge management of PHI. 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.

Back to Top

HI 5382 Synthesis Project of Public Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

This course provides an opportunity for students to gain practical, hands-on cumulating knowledge and experience in PHI. This project should reflect a substantial effort and competency of synthesis in informatics developed through the course training that address core competencies of the PHI system by working through a 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 the mentor(s). Expectations of the class include the presentation of the conclusions from the project in a written manner for academic dissemination as a conference abstract/poster.

Back to Top

HI 6000 Practicum in Health Informatics

1-3 semester credit hours (variable hours/week)
Prerequisite: Consent of practicum coordinator

During the practicum, each student will select an area of interest in which to apply the knowledge and skills 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 approved by the student’s advising committee and practicum supervisor, to be accomplished. 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.

Back to Top

HI 6001 Special Topics in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6002 Directed Study in Health Informatics

1-9 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies (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 or 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.

Back to Top

HI 6300 Advanced Health Information Systems

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 5300

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.

Back to Top

HI 6301 Health Data Display

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Web-based instruction

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.

Back to Top

HI 6302 Knowledge Modeling and Engineering in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

This course covers in-depth the methods and techniques for knowledge modeling and engineering in health care. 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 also covers 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 health care area for which they must develop a knowledge model and then construct and evaluate a knowledge-based system.

Back to Top

HI 6303 Introduction to Telehealth

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6305 Social Dynamics and Health Information

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Web-based instruction
Prerequisite: HI 5300 or HI 5310 or 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 telehealth care through the web.

Back to Top

HI 6306 Information and Knowledge Representation in Health Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

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.

Back to Top

HI 6308 Consumer Informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6309 Healthcare Interface Design

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6311 Advanced Decision Analysis

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6313 Scientific Writing in Health Care

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3

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 skills.

Back to Top

HI 6314 Knowledge Acquisition

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
Lecture contact hours: 2; Lab contact hours: 3
Prerequisite: HI 6302

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 it. A more detailed understanding of the repository can be found in HI 6302, Knowledge Modeling I.

Back to Top

HI 6315 Advanced Electronic Health Records

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6322 Distributional Semantics: Methods and Biomedical Applications

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies

This course concerns computational methods that learn about the meaning of words and concepts from their distribution in natural language, and consequently are able to perform cognitive tasks in a human-like manner. For example, with the appropriate learning materials, these methods have shown performances comparable with English as a second language speakers on the Test of English as a Foreign Language synonym test. Applications in the biomedical domain include information retrieval, automated indexing of the biomedical literature, literature-based knowledge discovery and the analysis of biological sequences. This course will explore the underlying theories and various methodological approaches used to measure semantic relatedness (the extent to which the meaning of two terms is related), as well as their application in biomedical and other domains. The course will provide hands-on instruction so that students will emerge with the ability to apply the methods taught in the class in their own research.

Back to Top

HI 6323 Data Mining in Biomedical informatics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies
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.

Back to Top

HI 6324 Health Information Technology Policy

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor

This course will examine policy issues related to the use of information technologies in health care. It will examine key policies and policy issues in three areas: clinical informatics, consumer informatics and population health informatics. The primary focus will be on the United States, but international approaches will also be discussed.

Back to Top

HI 6328 Health Care Delivery in an EHR-Enabled Environment

3 semester credit hours/meets part of the advanced informatics competencies
Prerequisite: HI 5300

This course will expose doctoral students to an interdisciplinary research area that aims to explore the challenges of improving health care delivery and reducing costs in an EHR-enabled environment. Students will work with a large scale claims dataset, examining the impact of this detailed data upon health care quality and reimbursement models. Specific topics may include but are not limited to chronic care management, health care coordination, patient life cycle management, system dynamics, accountable care organizations and population health management.

Back to Top

HI 6330 Biomedical Natural Language Processing

3 semester credit hours/meets part of advanced informatics competencies

This course will examine current natural language processing (NLP) methods and their applications in the biomedical domain. It will provide a systematic introduction to basic knowledge and methods used in NLP research and hands-on experience with existing biomedical NLP systems. Students will gain knowledge and skills in various NLP tasks such as named entity recognition, information extraction, and information retrieval.

Back to Top

HI 6340 Health Information Visualization & Visual Analytics

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies

This course introduces the basics of information visualization, which is the use of interactive visual representations of data to amplify human cognition. Properly constructed visualizations allow us to analyze data by exploring it from different perspectives and using the power of our visual system to quickly reveal patterns and relationships. This course uses practical, hands-on examples and exercises to teach the theory and application of information visualization for health data. The class emphasizes visual analysis of time-series data, ranking and part-to-whole relations, deviations, distributions, correlations, multivariate, and geographic data. You will also learn how to combine multiple visualizations into interactive dashboards and how to use Tableau, a state-of-the-art information visualization tool to produce and deliver visualizations and dashboards quickly and easily.

Back to Top

HI 7000 Advanced Preceptorship

1-9 semester credit hours (variable hours/week)
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.

Back to Top

HI 7050 Research in Health Informatics

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.

Back to Top

HI 7150 Research Seminar

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.

Back to Top

HI 7301 Grant Writing

3 semester credit hours/meets part of research informatics competencies
Required for doctoral students

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.

Back to Top

HI 9999 Dissertation in Health Informatics

1-9 semester credit hours (variable hours)
Required for doctoral students; may be repeated for 9 hours to meet the degree requirement
Prerequisite: Advance to candidacy exam successfully completed

The post-candidacy doctoral student will use this course to write their doctoral dissertation under the supervision of their primary mentor, and in collaboration with their advisory committee. This course may be repeated for at least 9 hours to meet the degree requirement.

Back to Top