Professor Samuel Volchenbaum
Textbook: Shortliffe, E.H. (Ed.) (2006). Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Healthcare and Biomedicine (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer
This excellent survey course helped me to move beyond a
narrow focus on physician interactions with office-based and hospital-based
electronic medical records and begin to comprehend what a large number of
disciplines are encompassed under the heading medical informatics. In addition
to extensive readings in the textbook and the literature, the course included
nine online lectures in a shared Adobe Connect virtual classroom so the
instructor and students could interact live in real time. There was also plenty of
asynchronous conversation on the Discussion Boards. Although the ambitious
breadth of the curriculum occasionally made it difficult to examine some topics
in the depth they deserved, all the key subjects were explored in appropriate
detail during more narrowly focused courses later in the program.
narrow focus on physician interactions with office-based and hospital-based
electronic medical records and begin to comprehend what a large number of
disciplines are encompassed under the heading medical informatics. In addition
to extensive readings in the textbook and the literature, the course included
nine online lectures in a shared Adobe Connect virtual classroom so the
instructor and students could interact live in real time. There was also plenty of
asynchronous conversation on the Discussion Boards. Although the ambitious
breadth of the curriculum occasionally made it difficult to examine some topics
in the depth they deserved, all the key subjects were explored in appropriate
detail during more narrowly focused courses later in the program.
A list of subject areas selected from my study notes for the final exam demonstrates the extent of material covered:
- Types and elements of medical data, coding systems, information retrieval, and digital libraries.
- Weaknesses of paper data, data selection and uses, data entry and validation, and information systems development and life cycle.
- Database and computer system interfaces and mapping and statistical concepts of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive value.
- Ethical and privacy issues and standards, doctor-patient confidentiality, the rights of research subjects and how and when to anonymize research data.
- Medical reasoning and clinical decision support, probabilistic methods, Bayes' Theorem, clinical knowledge bases and prediction rules.
- Hospital and medical enterprise information systems, integration of clinical, business, and administrative information systems in healthcare organizations.
- Human-computer interfaces, psychology of human information processing and its application to principles of interface design, origin and use of clinical practice guidelines.
- Consumer and public health informatics, epidemiology and immunization issues, telehealth, patient portals, and personal health records.
- Evaluating the effectivemness of health information technologies, integrating clinical and research information, imaging informatics, emerging technologies and future trends in medical informatics.
In addition to a midterm and final exam, the course required a short research paper and a major research paper, each produced by the same team of five students, introducing us to the paradigm of collaborative literature research that would characterize the rest of the program. The power of drawing a synthesis from the wide spectrum of knowledge, experience, and viewpoints available on the team was immediately
apparent. Along with this came the challenges of holding group conferences across four time zones, exchanging and editing drafts and documents by emails or online collaboration tools, showing leadership while also encouraging leadership in your teammates, and keeping to a schedule while still respecting the career and family commitments of all team members. Despite the difficulties involved, I loved working with the other students, and the team projects were one of the highlights of my training experience
apparent. Along with this came the challenges of holding group conferences across four time zones, exchanging and editing drafts and documents by emails or online collaboration tools, showing leadership while also encouraging leadership in your teammates, and keeping to a schedule while still respecting the career and family commitments of all team members. Despite the difficulties involved, I loved working with the other students, and the team projects were one of the highlights of my training experience
My teammates for the two projects were Rhona Banayat, Ralph Garcia, Charlie Kesinger, and Amanda McCook. I was able to interest my colleagues in two subjects near and dear to my heart. We wrote our short paper on the financial, technical, social, psychological, and organizational barriers that hinder physicians from adopting health information technology, and we wrote our major paper on the
barriers that hinder health information exchange and interoperability and how to overcome those challenges and form a regional health information exchange. Links to view the papers are on the next subpage.
barriers that hinder health information exchange and interoperability and how to overcome those challenges and form a regional health information exchange. Links to view the papers are on the next subpage.