health informatics assignment

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StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

StatPearls [Internet].

Informatics.

Maxwell Y. Jen ; Oren J. Mechanic ; Dac Teoli .

Affiliations

Last Update: September 4, 2023 .

• Definition/Introduction

Health informatics is the interprofessional field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem-solving, decision making, motivated by efforts to improve human health. In other words, it is the science of information where the information is defined as data with meaning.

For the healthcare practitioner, the subspecialty of clinical informatics is most relevant. Clinical Informatics is an interprofessional practice that blends medical practice with information technologies and behavioral management principles. Rather than a rigid academic or technical pursuit, clinical informatics is a practical discipline that improves patient outcomes, advances medical research, and increases the value of healthcare delivery. The key to these goals is the understanding that the successful evolution of health care is determined not by technical capability, but by how effectively the technology is designed and integrated into existing cultures, regulatory frameworks, and institutional workflows.

Though clinical informatics has been practiced since the 1950s, it was not until the internet era that the discipline began achieving widespread consideration and application outside academics. In the United States, clinical informatics was driven further into the spotlight as new federal laws (see below) strongly incentivized the adoption of new healthcare information technology systems, citing these systems as solutions to the nation’s soaring health care costs and chronic disease rates. [1] [2] [3]

• Issues of Concern

Applications

As a practical discipline, clinical informatics has far-reaching applications within the healthcare framework—individual physicians, multi-center hospital systems, medical insurance firms, government agencies, medical device developers and more are all potential beneficiaries.  Examples include:  

Electronic Health Record (EHR): Perhaps the most publicly high-profile application of clinical informatics is the universal adoption of the EHR. The Affordable Care Act of 2009 (see below) mandated that all healthcare institutions transition from paper to exclusively digital medical record system. Since it must record every patient encounter, medication ordered, and laboratory test performed, the EHR impacts every aspect of a healthcare institution’s operations. Subsequent EHR adoption achieved varied results. Successful institutions integrated the new EHR systems with existing institutional culture and workflows with minimal disruption to or even improved delivery of healthcare services. Other institutions with less effective or absent clinical informatics support saw worsened employee morale, decreased operational effectiveness, and compromised patient safety. 

Predictive Medicine: One of the most promising potential applications of clinical informatics is the development of predictive medicine. Predictive medicine is the science of accurately risk-stratifying an individual for developing the disease within a specified time-frame. While predictive capabilities traditionally revolved around genetics (e.g. karyotype testing for Down Syndrome, BRCA gene testing for breast cancer), clinical informatics has helped to usher in a new era of predictive medicine based on so-called Big Data, huge quantities of data obtained from a variety of disparate sources in real-time. Predictive tools based on big data has the potential to help clinicians better predict who will get sick when and how best to intervene before the patient becomes sick. Though healthcare has yet to develop its own predictive tools, Target Corporation, a major retailer, has already developed a big-data informatics system that predicts when a customer is pregnant; the company subsequently tailors its marketing efforts towards those customers accordingly.

Epidemic Tracking: Not limited to healthcare data, clinical informaticists can assist in capturing and transforming any data source into usable information. In 2014, public health specialists published a report demonstrating how they could track and predict HIV outbreaks based on real-time data captured from the social media platform, Twitter. Prior research demonstrated how Twitter could also be used to predict outbreaks of influenza. With the measles and Ebola crises of 2015, other groups are now attempting to apply clinical informatics principles to capture non-traditional streams of data and create systems of predicting and preventing the next epidemics.  

Legislation

Executive Order 13335 (2004), also known as the Incentives for the Use of Health Information Technology and Establishing the Position of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator, created the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC). While this did not directly affect clinical informatics or healthcare at large, it was the United States Federal Government’s first step in creating a nationwide health information exchange, a foundational system for collecting and exchanging data across hospitals, regions, and states. To date, a national healthcare information exchange nor standards for creating one has not yet been established.  

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AARA or Recovery Act) of 2009 was signed into law by President Obama. Aiming to stimulate the ailing economy that had been plagued by the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, the total sum of the stimulus package was $787 billion. [4]  The ARRA authorized hundreds of billions of dollars that were to be used for new health and healthcare spending. These monetary funds were to be used as discretionary appropriations and mandatory spending that should promote the adoption of electronic health records. [5]  The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, or Recovery Act), established the Health Information Technology for Economic Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), which requires CMS to provide incentive payments under Medicare and Medicaid to “Meaningful Users” of Electronic Health Records. The HITECH Act catalyzed industry adoption of clinical informatics with the goal of “Improving Health Care Quality, Safety, and Efficiency.” Through a system of payments and penalties, the HITECH Act strongly incentivized not only adopting the EHR but also achieving “Meaningful Use,” a set of requirements that demonstrate effective integration and use of the EHR within the healthcare institution. The HITECH Act further strengthened patient information privacy standards for the new era of digitized and highly transferable information.   

Under the AARA, among other institutions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received a $10.4 billion allocation in order to support scientific research priorities, update buildings and facilities, conduct extramural construction, repairs, and alterations, and conduct comparative effectiveness research. The two largest categories of spending involved allocating grants to researchers and investigators who had submitted applications to the NIH and investigators who previously submitted research proposals. The funds allocated to investigators who had previously submitted research proposals were meant to cover projects that were highly creditable but missed the pay-line. Additionally, The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute also received an allocation of $763 million. [4]

Governing and Professional Institutions 

International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA): Founded in 1987, IMIA is the foremost international coordinating body for the promotion and development of medically-related informatics interests including biomedical informatics and clinical informatics. It serves as the hub that coordinates the efforts and goals of regional subsidiary institutions worldwide.

American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA): AMIA is the United States affiliate institution of its IMIA parent organization. Though officially the United States representative organization, AMIA is composed of thousands of members from over 40 countries worldwide. AMIA’s goal, like IMIA’s, is to promote and develop the role of informatics in improving patient care, healthcare operations, and biomedical research. 

American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS): The ABMS is the certifying body regulating and overseeing all physicians and physician specialists, including physician clinical informaticists. In 2011, ABMS officially recognized clinical informatics as a subspecialty of medicine and began offering board certification to qualifying physicians in 2013 through the American Board of Preventative Medicine.

Other Informatics Subspecialties:

• Translational Bioinformatics
• Imaging Informatics
• Public Health Informatics
• A framework for representing knowledge (e.g., SNOMED CT).

Is the practice and science of classification. It adds structure to the information to make it easy to search and filter.

The core concern of an informatician is transforming data into information into knowledge.

• Data (Pleural datum): observations (characters, symbols, signs) that may or may not be meaningful.
• Information: data that has meaning or facts from which conclusion can be drawn. Data has a structure or relationship.
• Knowledge: information believed to be justifiably true. Processed information for a purpose.
• Wisdom: Knowledge over time

Informatics Fields

A number of highly subspecialized areas of informatics have developed.  Some examples include the following:

• Internet Informatics: The study of technologies behind internet-based information systems and skills needed to map problems to deployable internet-based solutions.
• Data Mining & Information Analysis: Integrates the collection, analysis, and visualization of complex data and its critical role in research, business, and government.
• Life Science Informatics: Examines artificial information systems, which help scientists make great progress in identifying core components of organisms and ecosystems.
• Social Computing: Studies social interaction and developing systems that act as introducers, recommenders, coordinators, and record-keepers.
• Human-Computer Interaction: Informatics that studies how design and development work impacts users.
• Information Architecture: Information architecture studies the development of successful Web sites, software, intranets, and online communities. Architects structure the information and its presentation in a logical and intuitive way so that information can be successfully used.
• Information Assurance and Cybersecurity: The practice of creating and managing safe and secure systems. It is crucial for organizations public and private, large and small. Organizational informatics:
• Organizational informatics is fundamentally interested in the application of information, information systems and information and communications technology within organizations of various forms including the private sector, public sector, and voluntary sector organizations.  [6] [7] [8] [9]
• Clinical Significance

Informatics involves the practice of information processing and the engineering of information systems. The field considers the interaction between humans and information. Informatics has a social impact on information technologies.

Medical informatics can be an important tool to control and address public health concerns using an interprofessional team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and public health workers. Some examples include patients missing immunizations or tracking the proper use of controlled substances. The future of medical informatics is promising and many healthcare professionals should have a background in informatics. (Level V) [10]

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Disclosure: Maxwell Jen declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Oren Mechanic declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Dac Teoli declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

• Cite this Page Jen MY, Mechanic OJ, Teoli D. Informatics. [Updated 2023 Sep 4]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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5 Exciting Health Care Informatics Projects

Thanks to revolutionary technological advancements, modern medicine is poised for transformation from a “disease industry” to a “scientific wellness industry,” according to a report in healthcareitnews.com . And at the heart of this transition is the field of health care informatics.

Big data is changing everything — and the rapidly expanding use of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics is expected to drive breakthroughs in the health of entire populations and in individual health care that is more personalized than ever before.

“The contrast between 20th and 21st-century medicine is striking,” said Leroy Hood, Chief Science Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, describing care that is more proactive and “focused on the individual,” and that employs “personalized data clouds to explore the complexities of human beings.”

Hood sees the potential to create “a world virtually free of Alzheimer’s” within 10 years by processing information from such data clouds with computer-aided diagnostics to identify and track risk far earlier, and to design new treatments for specific sub-types of the debilitating disease.

That’s just one example of how health informatics is changing the future of health care right now. From battling the opioid epidemic to breakthroughs in combating sepsis and pediatric asthma, health informatics is the common denominator among countless initiatives with the promise to make the world a healthier place.

Additionally, because the demand for health informatics professionals is expanding so rapidly, this is also a time of opportunity in the employment market for people who possess health care and/or information technology experience.

For a closer look at the fascinating work being done by health care informatics professionals, here are several examples of notable health informatics projects and initiatives.

Combating the Opioid Crisis

With an average of 44 deaths each day from opioid-related overdoses and an estimated 2 million Americans suffering from addiction to prescription painkillers, the opioid epidemic is one of the nation’s most significant public health crises.

Now, providers are looking to health informatics — combining data analytics and population health management strategies — to respond more effectively. Health informaticians are using improved access to data (including prescribing data) to:

• Deepen their understanding of the risk factors for addiction
• Reassess prescribing practices and introduce opioid alternatives where appropriate
• Crack down more effectively on the small percentage of patients who are trying to scam providers into issuing prescriptions
• Utilize new data-driven insights to put in place population health management strategies that help individual patients

Examples include the MO HealthNet initiative in Missouri, which used health informatics data insights to realize a 30 percent statewide drop in the rate of prescriptions for Schedule II opioids.

Another example involves a dashboard tool created by the Rhode Island Quality Institute that makes it easier for primary care providers and opioid treatment centers to more effectively access and share information. Users of the Care Management Dashboard saw their patients’ emergency department return visits within 30 days reduced by 16 percent, an outcome that earned the institute a 2018 Innovator Award from Healthcare Informatics .

[RELATED]  How Health Informatics is Shaping Future of Health Information Management >>

Fighting Pediatric Asthma

Another Innovator Awards semifinalist is using informatics data to reduce emergency room visits for pediatric asthma-related issues by 18 percent and cut about $1 million in avoided emergency room costs.

As part of its strategic plan for population health management of pediatric patients, Children’s Hospital of Orange County (Calif.) developed a system of asthma patient measures designed to better manage the condition and keep individual patients out of emergency situations. The measures are built into each patient’s electronic health record and the data is available to providers in real time as part of the clinical workflow.

The number of children with an asthma action plan grew quickly, fueling the reduction in emergency room encounters and earning them a Healthcare Informatics Innovator Award .

Life-Saving Technology

One man’s path into the field of health informatics led directly to a project that is credited with speeding up medical science’s ability to detect signs of sepsis — a life-threatening condition that kills an estimated quarter million patients annually and is caused by the body’s extreme response to an infection.

Andrew Harrison was a student in the Mayo Clinic’s Medical Scientist Training Program when he attended a lecture about “data sniffers,” computer applications that sift through a patient’s electronic health record and alert care providers to early signs of dangerous syndromes.

“I knew nothing of clinical informatics,” Harrison said in a story in Discovery’s Edge (the research magazine of the Mayo Clinic). But he was intrigued that computers could be taught to conduct medical surveillance and that data analysis could improve clinical decision-making.

Working alongside the researcher whose talk initially inspired his passion for informaticsHarrison focused his doctoral studies on developing a first-generation “sepsis sniffer” application. He continued to improve the sniffer, and in a clinical study it was able to identify patients with sepsis sooner than bedside clinicians.

Harrison is “a prototype for medical students trained to heal both patients and the health care system,” according to the Mayo Clinic story chronicling his work. “Instead of searching for breakthroughs under a microscope, he discovered statistical enlightenment — the kind that becomes a best practice and improves care around the world.”

[RELATED]  8 Technologies that are Changing Healthcare >>

Real Improvements Through Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Despite some healthy skepticism from critics , artificial intelligence is already ubiquitous throughout the health care industry.

In fact, according to a healthitanalytics.com report titled “Top 12 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Healthcare,” as more and more data becomes available — including through billing and payment systems that capture incredible amounts of valuable information about patients and their conditions — “artificial intelligence is poised to be the engine that drives improvements across the care continuum.”

Providers are already using AI algorithms to gain “unprecedented insights into diagnostics, care processes, treatment variability and patient outcomes,” according to the report, which explains how the medical community is using artificial intelligence to capitalize upon the “nearly endless opportunities to leverage technology to deploy more precise, efficient and impactful interventions at exactly the right moment in a patient’s care.”

Strategies for harnessing artificial intelligence to improve health care include:

• Expanding access to care in underserved or developing regions — In areas where there is a deficit of trained medical personnel, AI can be used to perform diagnostic duties typically handled by humans.
• Transforming smartphone selfies into powerful diagnostic tools — Experts believe that images taken from smartphones and other devices will increasingly become an important tool for medical imaging, particularly in underserved areas.
• Using AI algorithms to enhance the ability of “smart devices” now widely used in health care to identify deterioration in a patient’s condition or detect the development of complications.
• Developing the next generation of non-invasive radiology tools for diagnostic processes that still rely on tissue samples obtained through biopsy.
• Assisting providers with decision making at bedside — According to healthitanalytics.com, AI offers tremendous potential for “powering predictive analytics and clinical decision support tools that clue providers in to problems long before they might otherwise recognize the need to act.”

Putting the ‘Me’ in Personalized Medicine

In addition to equipping doctors and nurses with powerful tools designed to improve patient health and the delivery of care, health informatics is also opening up incredible new possibilities for patients to become more actively engaged in their own care.

For example, tech giant Apple has developed a personalized Health Records system that promises to reshape patient engagement, according to Dr. Shez Partovi, chief digital officer and senior vice president of digital transformation at Dignity Health, a longtime collaborator with Apple and an early adopter of its Health Records program. Since its launch in January 2018, more than 100 hospitals and clinics have signed on to the initiative.

Apple has developed health care applications for its iPhones and tablets that enable both providers and patients to instantly access a patient’s entire medical record. Working in conjunction with the traditional patient portals used by many health organizations, the Apple system securely transfers a patient’s medical data to the Health Records app so the patient, as well as providers, can view in it instantly in a familiar, easy-to-use interface. High-resolution display and powerful graphics capabilities even give doctors the ability to view a patient’s imaging studies on an iPad.

But in addition to enabling care providers to work more efficiently on a patient’s behalf, one of the most exciting aspects of the program is that it enables patients to better manage their own care and even connect remotely with providers between visits.

According to Apple, the program enables patients to “aggregate their health records from multiple institutions alongside their patient-generated data, creating a more holistic view of their health.”

Dr. Partovi at Dignity Health said the Apple initiative involves “empowering patients by giving them their data.” In addition to ownership of their medical data, patients will benefit from apps (both currently existing and those to be developed in the future) that help them make better, healthier use of their data — for example, an app that helps diabetes sufferers treat their condition by using food as medicine.

The goal of all of this, says Apple, is “care that becomes more efficient, more personalized, and ultimately more human.”

Learning More About Health Care Informatics

Despite showing great promise to make the world a healthier place, the field of health care informatics continues to face a talent shortage, with strong demand and high pay for employees who possess medical/clinical experience as well as proficiency in data analysis, information technology or informatics.

For that reason, many current and future health informatics professionals are taking advantage of specialized master’s degree programs that build on their work experience and knowledge of the health care field while refining their programmatic, technical and analytical skills.

One of the most exciting aspects of health informatics is the future breakthroughs that “we cannot even imagine yet,” said Dr. Jonathan Mack, program director for health care informatics and nursing informatics at University of San Diego. In Q&A about career growth in the field of health informatics , Dr. Mack speaks about the state of this fast-growing discipline and the significant opportunities for motivated individuals to pursue a meaningful career in health informatics.

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• Weill Cornell Medicine

MS in Health Informatics

Transforming healthcare through data and information technology.

Our MS in Health Informatics program is focused on the application of information technology , social and behavioral science, and data science in healthcare delivery. We study, develop, and improve health care information technologies. To apply these information technologies effectively, we also study human and organizational behavior.  

Core Training

Our core curriculum covers three domains:

• Information technology and data science:   Students study research and visualization methods, artificial intelligence , data management, and informatics standards and technology infrastructure.
• Health and health care:   Students learn about domestic and global healthcare, with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the daily life of a hospital .
• Human and organizational behavior:   Students cover human factors, human-computer interaction, and diffusion of innovation to learn how to position information systems for success.

Our program offers innovative key informatics skills blended with healthcare system knowledge. Students study state of the art topics in health informatics such as artificial intelligence , natural language processing, data management, and consumer informatics, culminating in a hands-on capstone project with clients from our industry partners worldwide .  

Collaboration is at the core of our program, with students and faculty from a range of fields, working with many collaborating NYC (New York City) institutes and around the world. This diversity creates a unique learning environment. To get a sense of our culture, please take a look at ours Admissions Information .  

Our alumni hold positions in data and policy analysis, health information technology, process improvement, consulting, and more at healthcare institutions and startups. Many alumni pursue advanced doctoral studies.  

Students can complete the health informatics curriculum in 12 months , we have an option for part-time students as well .  

Research Projects

Prerequisites for Admission

Information sessions, alumni outcomes, program director.

Jose Florez-Arango, MD, PhD, MS

HI 1 Year Student - Recommended Curriculum Progression

Students are recommended to follow the schedule below in order to ensure eligibility for graduation. The Education Team will monitor progression, but it is ultimately the student’s responsibility to track their progression to ensure they meet graduation requirements. Course offerings and course availability are subject to change. Health Informatics students must take 27 credits of the required courses, and 9 credits of electives (optional courses).

Note that each student must take a statistics placement test prior to the fall term beginning to determine whether the student is waived from taking Intro to Biostatistics with STATA Lab (HBDS 5001). If the student does not pass the statistics placement test, they must enroll in HBDS 5001 in the fall term.

Students take 11 required credits, with the option of 1 or 2 electives

Statistics Placement Test - Optional

Introduction to health informatics (hinf 5001) - required.

Course Director: Marianne Sharko MD, MS 3 credits

Health informatics is the body of knowledge that concerns the acquisition, storage, management and use of information in, about and for human health, and the design and management of related information systems to advance the understanding and practice of healthcare, public health, consumer health and biomedical research. The discipline of health informatics sits at the intersection of several fields of research – including health and biomedical science, information and computer science, and sociotechnical and cognitive sciences. In recent years we have witnessed how the collection, storage and usage of digital health data has exponentially grown. Increases in the complexity of health information systems have driven growth in demand for a specialized workforce. This course introduces the field of health informatics and provides students with the basic knowledge and skills to pursue a professional career in this field and apply informatics methods and tools in their health professional practice.

Research Methods in Health Informatics (HINF 5004) - Required

Course Director: Yunyu Xiao, PhD 3 credits

Informatics innovations have their desired impact only when they have high quality, are highly usable, are integrated into their organizational setting, and are widely adopted and used. That makes it critical for informatics students to understand not only how informatics innovations work, but also the users and settings in which they are used. Students will learn methods and models for: measuring data and system quality; assessing and predicting technology adoption (what makes technology sticky?); improving humancomputer interaction via human factors engineering; understanding organizational and systemic challenges in the real world; influencing patients’ health behavior and decisions; and assessing quality, safety, and cost outcomes using health services research study designs. In this mixed methods course, students will gain experience using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine I (HINF 5012) - Required

Course Director: Chang Su, PhD 3 credits

Introduces students to a variety of analytic methods for health data using computational tools. The course covers topics in data mining, machine learning, classification, clustering and prediction. Students engage in hands-on exercises using a popular collection of data mining algorithms.

Master’s Project I and Professional Development (HCPR 6010) - Required

Course Director: Faculty 2 credit

This is the culminating capstone course of all masters-level graduate education programs. It has two aims: (1) helping students to discover and develop new and effective ways of managing and working together with all the stakeholders within the healthcare field and (2) helping accelerate a student's development of 12 the context awareness, integrative management, and industry skills that are needed to lead in a rapidly changing healthcare sector. This capstone course puts students in a new organization, one they don’t already know well, and gives them the chance to practice hitting the ground running. This culminating course provides a deeper preparation for the next stages of a student's career. The capstone project will last the entire year: the first term involves matching students with the right project, the second term has students working with their client, and the third term consists of a detailed report and final presentation in front of the client as well as faculty and fellow classmates.

Clinical Medicine for Informaticians (HINF 5024) - Elective

Course Director: Mark Weiner, MD 3 credits

In addition to technical, programming and analytical skills, healthcare informaticians and data scientists need clinical domain expertise to understand and interpret real world data and analytical findings and to communicate effectively with healthcare practitioners and investigators.  This course is designed to equip informaticians with a foundational understanding of key concepts in clinical medicine, especially as they relate to the collection, application and interpretation of real world data toward clinical phenotypes and predictive analytics.   Students will learn the fundamentals of the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory, hematological, endocrine, neurological, musculoskeletal, psychiatric, and renal systems and how diseases in these body systems are reflected in subjective and objective measures collected through patient reports, clinical observations, laboratory tests and ancillary studies.  Students will understand the clinicians approach to ordering tests to evaluate for the presence of disease.  They will also learn about the variety and classification of pharmacological therapies, the context and rationale for starting and stopping medications, and their intended and unintended effects on body systems.  Students will also learn how the physical and social environment in which patients live may impact the recognition and severity of illness, as well as  the timing, approach and outcomes of care. Students will be introduced to differentiated care in the management of different patient specialties, including pediatrics and geriatrics.

Healthcare Organization and Delivery (HPEC 5002) - Elective

Course Director: Lisa Kern MD, MPH 3 credits

The goal of this course is to educate students about the complexity and nuances of healthcare delivery. The course will be especially useful for non-clinicians who intend to go into fields that will require a detailed understanding of healthcare. Class sessions will not summarize healthcare; rather, they will analyze healthcare – through themes such as people, time, money, communication, uncertainty, and others. Students will come away from the course with a deeper appreciation of why it is difficult to change healthcare. They will then be able to anticipate the intended and unintended consequences of interventions and policies that they and others might implement.

Introduction to Biostatistics with STATA Lab (HBDS 5001)* - Elective w/ Placement Test

Introduction to Biostatistics with STATA Lab Course Director: Arindam RoyChoudhury, PhD 4 credits

An introduction to the fundamentals of biostatistics with primary emphasis on understanding of statistical concepts behind data analytic principles. This course will be accompanied with a Stata lab to explore, visualize and perform statistical analysis with data. Lectures and discussions will focus on the following: exploratory data analysis; basic concepts of statistics; construction of hypothesis tests and confidence intervals; the development of statistical methods for analyzing data; and development of mathematical models used to relate a response variable to explanatory or descriptive variables.

Spring Term 

Students take 12 required credits, with the option of 1 or 2 electives

Clinical Informatics (HINF 5011) - Required

Course Director: Sameer Malhotra, M.B.B.S., M.A. 3 credits

Prerequisite: Introduction to Health Informatics Clinical information systems such as electronic health records are central to modern healthcare. This course introduces students to the complex infrastructure of clinical information systems, technologies used to improve healthcare quality and safety (including clinical decision support and electronic ordering), and policies surrounding health information technology.

Health Data Management (HINF 5018) - Required

Course Director: Yiye Zhang, PhD 3 credits

Database systems are central to most organizations’ information systems strategies. At any organizational level, users can expect to have frequent contact with database systems. Therefore, skill in using such systems – understanding their capabilities and limitations, knowing how to access data directly or through technical specialists, knowing how to effectively use the information such systems can provide, and skills in designing new systems and related applications – is a distinct advantage and necessity today. The Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is one type of database systems that are most often used in healthcare organizations and is the primary focus of this course. An overview of the non-relational database structure will also be given using Python programming language to provide a fuller picture of the current data management landscape. Further, to provide students with opportunities to apply the knowledge they learn from the lectures, various homework assignments, lab assignments, an exam, and a database implementation project will be given.

Health Information Standards & Interoperability (HINF 5020) - Required

Course Director: Jyoti Pathak, PhD 3 credits

In modern healthcare. exchange of clinical data across multiple stakeholders — between healthcare organizations, between providers and patients, and among agencies and governmental entities — is pivotal. Health information standards provide the “backbone” to achieve uniform data interoperability and exchange across multiple heterogeneous systems. This course will introduce existing and emerging clinical data modeling, terminology and knowledge representation standards.

Master’s Project II (HCPR 6020) - Required

Course Director: Faculty 3 credits

This is the culminating capstone course of all masters-level graduate education programs. It has two aims: (1) helping students to discover and develop new and effective ways of managing and working together with all the stakeholders within the healthcare field and (2) helping accelerate a student's development of the context awareness, integrative management, and industry skills that are needed to lead in a rapidly changing healthcare sector. This capstone course puts students in a new organization, one they don’t already know well, and gives them the chance to practice hitting the ground running. This culminating course provides a deeper preparation for the next stages of a student's career. The capstone project will last the entire year: the first term involves matching students with the right project, the second term has students working with their client, and the third term consists of a detailed report and final presentation.

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine II (HINF 5025) - Elective

Course Director: Fei Wang, PhD 3 credits

Prerequisite: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine I This class will teach students more advanced topics on AI in medicine. It requires students to have taken the AI in medicine I class. The contents of the class cover generalizability of AI models, computational fairness, model interpretation and explanation, privacy and security, federated learning, multi-modal learning, generative AI, causal inference, target trial emulation. The students will be asked to do a final project with teams based on the contents taught in the class, and python programming will be needed for doing the project.

Natural Language Processing (HINF 5016) - Elective

Course Director: Yifan Peng, PhD 3 credits

This course introduces students to the field of natural language processing (NLP), applied to the health domain. NLP focuses on text data, which lacks the structure of conventional tabular data. In the health domain text is abundant in electronic health records, the medical literature and on the Web. Important applications of NLP include information extraction (pulling facts out of text) and information retrieval (searching through a collection of texts). The course presents methods for working with text: identifying the elements (words and symbols), recognizing sentence boundaries, parsing syntactic structures, assigning meaning, and establishing the structure of the discourse as a whole. The students build skills with these methods through laboratory work.

Summer Term

Students take 3 required credits, with the option of 1 or 2 electives

Master’s Project III (HCPR 6030) - Required

This is the culminating capstone course of all masters-level graduate education programs. It has two aims: (1) helping students to discover and develop new and effective ways of managing and working together with all the stakeholders within the healthcare field and (2) helping accelerate a student's development of the context awareness, integrative management, and industry skills that are needed to lead in a rapidly changing healthcare sector. This capstone course puts students in a new organization, one they don’t already know well, and gives them the chance to practice hitting the ground running. This culminating course provides a deeper preparation for the next stages of a student's career. The capstone project will last the entire year: the first term involves matching students with the right project, the second term has students working with their client, and the third term consists of a detailed report and final presentation in front of the client as well as faculty and fellow classmates.

Health Behavior and Consumer Informatics (HINF 5017) - Elective

Consumer health informatics (CHI) is the study of consumer information needs and technologies that provide consumers with the information they need to be more engaged in self-care and healthcare. This introductory CHI course will present an overview of theories of health and information behavior; key concepts and terminology; and main application domains. We will explore how health behavior theories 8 provide a framework for explaining consumers’ health behaviors and how CHI tools that are built with a theoretical foundation can promote health behavior change. The course will cover CHI applications in major application domains including electronic patient portals, mobile health (mHealth), and telehealth. Students will learn how to assess end-user needs and technological practices of potential users who experience health information and technological disparities. Students will also learn how to design for endusers, evaluate CHI applications and research.

Implementation Science and AI Ethics (HINF 5023) - Elective

Course Director:  Marianne Sharko MD, MS 3 credits

This course will provide an overview of implementation science and introduce issues surrounding ethics in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. It will explore the challenges in the safe and effective implementation of predictive models, large language models and generative AI in healthcare. It will identify ethical issues surrounding the use of AI in healthcare through the lens of the medical ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice and will provide a framework for evaluating the ethics of AI generated tools from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including patients, providers, health systems and payors. Students will examine predictive models created to assist in healthcare management, understand the challenges in their effective and appropriate implementation, and appreciate the potential for unintended consequences and safety risks. We will explore the need to develop clinical decision support tools that are guided by the principles of fairness, appropriateness, validity, effectiveness, and safety (FAVES). We will discuss the importance of informaticists and providers as advocates for seeking transparency in predictive algorithms, and utilizing measures of reliability, validity, and effectiveness in their outcomes. We will address the importance of advocating for equity in accessibility and the need to address bias in the development of AI-generated clinical decision tools.

We will introduce implementation science, frameworks and theories, including Diffusion of Innovation, RE-AIM and PRISM. We will include projects to provide practical experience in the process of implementation that will highlight research methods, measures, and potential barriers and facilitators. We will invite experts in the field to provide guest lectures and to lead student workshops within their areas of expertise. The learning style is mostly student-driven, using “flipped classroom”, participatory exercises, teamwork, workshops and presentations. After the midterm, students will work to define a project, analyze related literature, and give a presentation in the final week.

PHS Internship Course (HCPR 5040) - Elective

1-3 credits

*Contingent upon results of the statistics placement test

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Population Health Sciences 402 E. 67th St. New York, NY 10065 Phone: (646) 962-8001

Student Spotlights from this Program

In 2020, Taylor Dang began medical school with plans to become a naturopathic physician. She was passionate about healthcare and was actively involved in political advocacy centered around health justice. However, as one of few students of color in her cohort, Taylor felt isolated at medical school. She made the call to withdraw and identify another path in healthcare. Taylor is now a graduate of the  MS in Health Informatics   program  at Weill Co rnell Medicine (WC M ) , where she has found a way to pursue advocacy through the lens of healthcare systems and information.     

Dayoung Kim became interested in artificial intelligence (AI) while completing her undergraduate degree in computer science at the EWHA Womans University in South Korea.  She worked in a bioinformatics and natural language processing (NLP) lab there, which shaped her decision to pursue higher education and further her knowledge of AI. She is now an alumna of the  MS in Health Informatics program at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM )  and  works as a machine learning engineer at Boeing.   

Maya discovered the  MS in Health Informatics  program while in Austria, where she taught English at a secondary school for two years. While there, she volunteered to tutor Syrian refugees in English, and at welcome centers to help Ukrainian refugees who fled the country when the war began. The experiences were jarring but propelled her to want to do more for others on a global scale.    

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Health Informatics Transforms Modern Healthcare:7 Powerful Ways

Table of contents.

In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, the integration of health informatics is reshaping how medical professionals deliver care, manage data, and improve outcomes. Health informatics harnesses the power of data and technology, paving the way for more efficient and patient-centric healthcare systems.

Here’s a look at seven impactful ways health informatics is transforming modern healthcare.

1. Enhancing Patient Care through Data-Driven Insights in Health Informatics

• One of the most significant ways health informatics is impacting modern healthcare is by providing data-driven insights that lead to more effective and personalized care.
• Health informatics leverages electronic health records (EHRs) to compile comprehensive patient histories, including past illnesses, surgeries, allergies, current medications, and genetic predispositions.
• This wealth of information enables healthcare professionals to detect underlying patterns that may not be immediately obvious, leading to more accurate diagnoses and tailored treatment plans.
• Imagine a scenario where a physician can instantly access a patient’s full medical history, reducing the need for repetitive tests and minimizing delays in critical decision-making. This level of data accessibility not only enhances care quality but also boosts patient safety.

2. Improving Communication and Coordination Among Providers

• Effective communication and collaboration among healthcare providers are crucial for quality patient care.
• Health informatics has revolutionized the way medical teams communicate, facilitating real-time data exchange and collaboration across departments.
• For instance, a specialist working in a hospital can instantly share a patient’s lab results and imaging scans with a primary care physician, enabling faster and more cohesive treatment strategies. This is particularly vital for patients with complex or chronic conditions who may be receiving care from multiple specialists.
• By reducing communication gaps and ensuring that all members of a care team are informed, health informatics reduces medical errors, prevents treatment duplication, and improves overall patient outcomes.

3. Enabling Predictive Analytics for Preventive Care

• Preventive care is a cornerstone of modern medicine, and health informatics plays a crucial role in advancing this approach through predictive analytics. By analyzing large-scale datasets, healthcare professionals can identify risk factors and predict which patients are more likely to develop certain diseases.
• This data-driven foresight allows for early interventions that can prevent the onset of illnesses or manage conditions before they become severe. For example, algorithms can assess patterns in patient data to predict who might be at risk for diabetes or heart disease.
• Physicians can then proactively offer lifestyle interventions, monitoring, and medications to help prevent these conditions. This not only improves individual patient outcomes but also significantly reduces healthcare costs associated with managing advanced diseases.

4. Transforming Patient Engagement and Self-Care

• Health informatics has empowered patients to take an active role in managing their own health. With advancements such as patient portals, wearable health devices, and mobile apps, patients can access their medical records, monitor their vital signs, and even communicate with their healthcare providers from anywhere in the world.
• These tools make it easier for patients to track their progress, set health goals, and receive personalized health advice. For example, patients with chronic conditions like hypertension can use wearable devices to monitor their blood pressure daily and receive alerts if readings go beyond safe limits.
• This instant feedback encourages adherence to treatment plans and promotes healthier habits. By putting more control in patients’ hands, health informatics fosters greater engagement, enhances self-care, and improves overall health outcomes.

5. Facilitating Medical Research and Innovation

• The integration of health informatics into medical research has opened up new frontiers in understanding diseases and developing treatments.
• Researchers can now analyze data from millions of patients worldwide, uncovering insights that were previously out of reach. This ability to handle and interpret large, diverse datasets accelerates the discovery of new drugs, the development of treatment protocols, and the understanding of how different demographics are affected by diseases.
• For example, health informatics systems can analyze data to identify how different genetic markers influence the effectiveness of cancer treatments. This data-driven research enables the creation of personalized medicine strategies, where treatments are tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup, increasing the likelihood of successful outcomes.

6. Enhancing Public Health Surveillance and Response

• Health informatics is a powerful tool for public health officials tasked with monitoring and controlling disease outbreaks. By analyzing data from hospitals, clinics, and laboratories, health informatics systems can identify emerging health threats and track the spread of diseases in real-time.
• This was crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic, where data-driven models helped governments and healthcare systems allocate resources, predict surges in cases, and implement timely interventions.
• Furthermore, health informatics aids in vaccination tracking and the management of preventive health programs, ensuring that public health initiatives are as effective and targeted as possible. By transforming how health data is collected and analyzed, health informatics significantly strengthens the global health surveillance network.

7. Streamlining Administrative Processes and Reducing Costs

• Administrative inefficiencies are a significant challenge in healthcare , often resulting in increased costs and delays in patient care.
• Health informatics addresses these inefficiencies by automating routine administrative tasks such as patient registration, billing, appointment scheduling, and insurance claims processing.
• For instance, electronic health records eliminate the need for paper-based charts and reduce the time spent on manual data entry, freeing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. Automated systems also minimize errors related to paperwork and ensure that claims are processed accurately and quickly.
• By streamlining these processes, health informatics not only enhances the operational efficiency of healthcare facilities but also reduces administrative burdens and lowers overall healthcare costs.

Health informatics is revolutionizing healthcare by improving patient care, facilitating research, empowering patients, and streamlining operations. As technology continues to evolve, the potential of health informatics to transform healthcare even further is immense.

From data-driven insights to proactive disease prevention and efficient communication, health informatics is laying the groundwork for a future where healthcare is smarter, faster, and more patient-focused than ever before. Embracing these advancements will ensure a more resilient and effective healthcare system for generations to come.

• Health Informatics 1
• Healthcare 57

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