Course Syllabus

TM 650 -- Health Informatics

Overview & Course Rationale

Information technology lies at the heart of revolutions in many industries, from finance to travel to communications. Health care especially has been touched by technologies which facilitate patient care, management and research. Edward H. Shortliffe and Leslie E. Perreault point out, however, that "society's overriding concern for patient well-being, and the resulting need for optimal decision making . . . sets medicine apart from many other information-intensive fields. That concern gives a special significance to the effective organization and management of the huge bodies of data with which health professionals must deal" (Shortliffe and Perreault, ix). For this reason, the Association of American Medical Colleges has recognized and defined the special field of medical informatics as: "a developing body of knowledge and a set of techniques concerning the organizational management of information in support of medical research, education, and patient care. . . . Medical informatics combines medical science with several technologies and disciplines in the information and computer sciences and provides methodologies by which these can contribute to better use of the medical knowledge base and ultimately to better medical care" (1986).

Information technology holds the potential to revolutionize health care practice if developed and applied appropriately to change physician and patient behavior rather than merely to refine existing practices. Even if practitioners choose to eschew these technologies themselves, they will be faced with patients who do not. Access to health care resources on the Internet, for example, is seldom limited only to health care providers. Patients may thus arrive at the doctor’s office either very well informed about their condition or grossly misguided by inaccurate yet easily attained online information. For these reasons a course which teaches students and practitioners how to capitalize effectively on these information resources and how to evaluate both their implications and ramifications is warranted.

Objectives

Students will learn about current technologies and their impacts on health care practice and research. Specifically, students will:

1. Use and evaluate Internet-based electronic communication resources:
   a. Find, subscribe to and participate in an electronic mail discussion list in the field of health informatics;
   b. Browse and search the World Wide Web for resources in the field of health informatics;
   c. Evaluate the quality of health-care and informatics related Internet resources;
   d. Use WebEDD to order articles for electronic document delivery;
   e. Articulate implications of Internet design and function, including bandwidth, content regulation and privacy/encryption/digitial signatures.
   
2. Understand broad issues surrounding technological advances in health care:
   a. Recognize the importance of the discipline of medical informatics, including its mission, scope and current issues;
   b. Recognize the potential of information technology to change health care practice;
   c. Appraise potential and limitations of telemedicine in the treatment of patients;
   d. Assess the promise and hurdles of implementing electronic medical record systems;
   e. Critically evaluate a recent technological advance in a health care area of interest;
   f. Envision the clinical information "system-after-next" and identify trends which will spur or impede its development.

Assignments and Course Requirements

You are required to complete the short, multiple choice quizzes and short-answer discussion questions which follow most learning modules (not all modules have these quizzes or discussion questions). In addition, there are four other assignments required for the course. See the "Assignments" section of the WebCT course page for details surrounding these assignments.

Grading Scale

Grade	Points Earned
A	1080 - 1200
B	960 - 1079
C	840 - 959

Works Cited

• Shortliffe, Edward H. Leslie E. Perreault, eds. Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.