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Updated in [July 26th, 2023]
This course, CS6440, is offered at Georgia Tech as part of the Online Masters Degree (OMS). It does not, however, earn credit towards the OMS degree. It is a survey course designed to provide a broad, forward-facing overview of contemporary health informatics, a specialized field of computing that seeks to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery. Students from diverse backgrounds, who have not been previously exposed to HIT, will gain an understanding of the complex and highly regulated the course healthcare industry, as well as the core technologies that drive all contemporary HIT systems and tools. Additionally, they will learn about the real world applications of HIT, from electronic medical and personal health records to exploiting digital data aggregated from them for research and other purposes.
Course Syllabus
The US Healthcare System
Key problems,Specific challenges presented by chronic disease,Major disconnect between the health system’s capabilities and the demands of chronic disease management,The hope that a combination of new incentives, health IT adoption, and new models of care can bridge this disconnect leading to a more efficient, effective, safer and more patient-centered US system of careFederal Policies & Initiatives
The important details of the specific programs that the federal government has put into place to spur health IT adoption by eligible providers and hospitals,The role played by financial incentives that reward performance, rather than the quantity of proceduresHealth Information Exchange
The rationale for and the major challenges of health information exchange (HIE),Various ways of classifying HIE,How to differentiate the various HIE architectures,Indiana Health Information Exchange as a premier example including descriptions of its key services,New approaches and technologies with a particular emphasis on Direct HIE, a new technology based on secure email and encrypted attachmentsPrivacy, Security and Trust
Key issues of privacy, security, and trust in a world of digital records and health information exchange,The key role that patient engagement plays in chronic disease prevention and management,Concerns patients have about sharing their health data,Various privacy consent models,Data segmentation as a key challenge for obtaining patient consent under what may be the most acceptable model,Concept of public key infrastructure (PKI) including the roles of the public key, private key, registration authority and certificate authorityData Standards
Rationale for standards and the evolutions that have been taking place in their use, technology and structure,Difference between a classification and an ontology,Key data standards (including ICD, CPT, LOINC and SNOMED),Differences between standards based on EDI/X12 and XMLInteroperability Standards
How data is transmitted within messages using HL7 and packaged into CCDA-based clinical documents for sharing via HIE,Clinical decision support (CDS, an important technology for the future) and the key elements of and remaining challenges with standards to support CDS,Next generation approaches based on web technologiesClinical Data Collection and Visualization Challenges
Key roles that data plays in medical practice,Root causes of common data quality issues in general,Specific root causes of data quality issues with respect to electronic health records,Challenges of efficiently and accurately collecting high quality, comprehensive clinical data from physicians,Challenges of visualizing digital health data in a way that supports the provider’s mental model,Key roles that information technology plays in the future vision of healthcareEmpowering the Patient
The key role that support for patients can play to achieve behavior change, adhere to prescribed treatments and generate data to help providers more continuously manage chronic diseases,Patient interests,Information technology tools now available to patients including patient health records, portals, social networking, in home technologies and mobile devices and sensors,Personal health records and their potential as app platforms,Social networking in patient education and care management,Various telemedicine modalities being developed and offered for use by patients at homePopulation Health Management
Difference between individual patient management, population management and public health,Technologies for aggregating data,The kinds of data that are collected,The kinds of reports that are required for population and public health managementData Query in a Federated Environment
Challenges of data query and aggregation in an environment where care providers are using disparate and non-interoperable EHRs,Differences among the distributed query technologies,Distributed query standards,Various open source query frameworksBig Data Meets Healthcare
The concept of “big data”,Common technical approaches to modeling and simulation and the common applications of each,Specific case studies of analytic applications to healthcare problems as diverse as improved clinical decision support, understanding clinical processes, modeling care spaces and providing optimal patient-specific treatments
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