IT225 and 525 Health Informatics        

 

Margaret Menzin         Office: S209                                                                     Phone: X2704 
                                        Email: menzin@simmons.edu            Home Phone: 781-862-5107

                            Office Hours: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 9:00- 11:00; and also
                                                       Mondays 2:30-7:00 and Wednesday afternoons by appointment and Fridays 1:00 - om (schedule ahead; I sometimes have meetings then.)
                                          Note: There are some classes missed because of the Monday holidays.  
                                                      These classes will be made up on an evening or by adding an extra hour to other meetings.

Mechanics of This Course

Texts:

  • Hebda and Czar: Handbook of Informatics for Nurses and Health Care Professionals- 5th edition (HC).
  • Grauer et al Excel 2010 and Access 2010 (Gr)

    • In addition, other books are on Reserve in the Library.

 Scheduling: One or both of the classes we miss because of the two Monday holidays will be made up at a time convenient to all.

There will be the following three projects required, each of which will count equally towards your grade:

  • Group or individual project on Unit 2 (using Excel) due approximately 6 weeks into the semester
  • Group or individual project on Unit 3 (using Access) due approximately 9 weeks into the semester
  • Group or individual project at the end of Unit 5 (finding an evaluating information ) in lieu of a final

Grades: Each of the exams and projects will be worth 25% as will be participation in the postings.

 

General Philosophy of This Course

This course focuses on the knowledge and skills needed by people who are interested in learning how information technology is used in the health care industry. It includes all the material recommended for undergraduate students by the American Nurses Association, but also encompasses a significant amount of additional material on the Electronic Health Record and on database issues. . It is the aim of this course for you to learn not only the skills that are currently useful, but also to build a conceptual base from which your knowledge will continue to grow over the course of your career. For example, when we discuss databases, not only will you learn how to use Access, but you will also learn about more general issues of concurrency, designing to avoid anomalies, access control, etc.

This will be a very 'hands on' course. You will learn a significant part of the material working at a computer in the 'on-line learning' part of the course; additionally, you will be at a computer in at all our meetings. We will also meet, during some labs, with nurses and other health information professionals to see major information systems and investigate how the theoretical issues play out in practice.

Finally, this course is being offered in a blended format. An extensive discussion of the philosophical and practical implications of 'blending' this course, as well as the rhythm of a blended course, may be found in the welcome letter for this course (in this eLearning site.) If you have not yet read that letter you should read it now.

Goals for the course:

  1. Students will know what the major applications of IT in health care are and understand how they interact.
  2. Students will be able to translate a written descriotion of a moderatly complex modeling problem into a spreadsheet, to solve it in Excel, and then to present the results using charts, graphs and written text.
  3. Students will understand the key issues in databases, and be able to design a simple database and to write moderately complex queries using either SQL or Access' wizards.
  4. Students will understand the main issues in usability and be able to explain how well they are or are not implemented in examples of EHR systems and patient portals.
  5. Students will know how DHHS gathers stakeholders for specific EHR examples, specifies tests for certification, and be able to read simple UML diagrams used in EHR specification and simple XML records.
  6. Students will be able to find and evaluate on-line information.

 

 

Accommodations for Special Needs:

Reasonable accommodations will be provided for students with documented physical, sensory, systemic, cognitive, learning, and psychiatric disabilities. If you have a disability and anticipate that you will need a reasonable accommodation in this class, it is important that you contact the Academic Support Center Director at 617-521-2471 early in the semester. Students with disabilities receiving accommodations are also encouraged to contact their instructors within the first 2 sessions of the semester to discuss their individual needs for accommodations.


Course Outline

1.      Overview of Information Systems (1 week: module 1) - HC Chapters 1, 2 and 6

Hardware, software, network architecture, integration of handhelds with computer systems, major applications of IT to nursing and health care.

 

2.      Modeling Health Care Problems with Spreadsheets (3 weeks: modules 2 3 and 4)- Gr Excel Ch.1-7 less a few pages specified in the modules

Mastery of Excel to solve problems such as seeing how a medicine decays in the body, what happens if a dose is skipped, how to schedule a department etc.

 

3.      Organizing Health Information with Databases (4-5 weeks) - HC Chs. 3, 12, 14; Gr Access Ch. 1- 6

Introduction to the key ideas in database design (consistency, restricting access of various users, recovery from failures, etc.). Design of your own databases for small problems using Access: designing the database, querying it, and generating reports.

 

4.      IT systems and issues in Health Care and the Electronic Health Record (1 1/2 week) - HC - Ch. 6 and 9-21 and handouts and assigned readings on usability

Examination of major (large) database systems found in hospitals, and the various technologies and initiatives in implementing the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Guest lecturers from major commercial systems and a chance to ask how they perform relative to nurses' and other providers' expectations and needs.

 

5.      Finding and Evaluating On-line Information (1 1/2 weeks) -: HC Ch. 4, 5, 24 and 25;

Tools for professionals to evaluate on-line information; tools to help patients evaluate information. Critiquing other sites.