Medical Informatics

HPM 512 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Medical Informatics and health information technology are increasingly critical for delivery of safe, effective health care, and also for research, management, and quality and safety improvement. Health information technology will likely transform health care in the coming years, and electronic health records represent a treasure trove of data for anyone interested in clinical effectiveness research, and a vehicle for improving healthcare delivery. In this course we describe the core issues in the field of medical informatics, survey the methods used to perform clinical effectiveness research using clinical systems, give examples of healthcare improvement using health information technology, and describe how to evaluate clinical systems interventions. Major topics include: the impact of clinical systems with a focus on clinical decision support, evaluation methods, obtaining information from clinical systems, and the role of informatics standards. Issues such as confidentiality and privacy, organizational factors, and interoperability, will also be covered. The relevance of informatics in disease management, patient computing, and biosurveillance will also be highlighted. You do not need to be a programmer or to have medical informatics as a primary interest to take this course; it is targeted at those who want to do clinical research or care improvement.

Course Activities: Students will write a paper about a proposed analysis using data from a clinical information system.

Restricted to HSPH degree or PCE students.