Pressing national priorities about reducing healthcare costs, improving the quality of care, and obtaining better health outcomes have created a great demand for healthcare professionals who can revolutionize health practices by using data to draw insights that lead to better patient care and health improvements. This three-course pathway will appeal to Data Science students who want to understand how radical changes in Health IT are transforming the way the industry works with data.
Prerequisites
Admission into the Data Science graduate program
Courses
Required
HIT 658: Health Informatics I
As the first required course in the series, Health Informatics I starts with introductory topics and proceeds with an overview of the essential topics of Health IT. Consistent with the interdisciplinary nature of Health IT, the course touches people and organizational aspects of health information systems as well as technology. While covering the essentials of Health Informatics, the course also achieves depth by engaging students in a semester- long study of a particular topic in Health IT. Some of the topics covered in this course include electronic health records, practice management, health information exchange, data standards, consumer health informatics and mobile health.
HIT 759: Health Informatics II
As the second required course in the health informatics series, Health Informatics II extends the coverage of the health informatics issues into areas such as online medical resources and search engines, evidence-based medicine and clinical practice guidelines, disease management, disease registries and quality improvement, patient safety and health IT, electronic prescribing, telemedicine, and bioinformatics.
Prerequisite: Health Informatics I.
Choice of one elective
HIT 723: Public Health Informatics
This course will cover the key components of public health practice, and include topics such as disease surveillance, outbreak, detection, investigation, vital records, and dissemination of information. The course will include data collection, data analysis, data cleaning, ways to provide data to customers, improve data quality and access to care, and develop and evaluate interventions. Students will develop an understanding of the use of IT to support public health practice, increase individual effectiveness, and improve the effectiveness of the public health enterprise.
HIT 674: Process & Quality Improvement with Health IT
This course provides an overview of quality measurement and process improvement as they relate specifically to the health care industry. The course will focus on the tools, techniques, and resources available to health care professionals through effective use of health IT. Students will learn how to create quality benchmarks, gather data, and analyze results. They will learn how to design specific processes that directly address analytical findings and have the potential to improve outcomes. Students will understand a variety of implementation strategies for new processes, and be able to use health IT and other tools to measure the overall effectiveness. They will also learn how to prioritize improvement efforts across complicated business and practice systems. Students will work in groups during certain exercises, explore real and hypothetical case studies, and make a final presentation of an improvement process and implementation which utilizes health IT as their course project.
HIT 751: Introduction to Healthcare Databases
This graduate level course provides an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of creating and maintaining databases within a healthcare setting. This is a beginner’s course and no previous programming or technical experience is required. Topics include: relational databases, normalization, data integrity, database design, data querying, and data forms/reports. The class includes applied lab and project components to provide hands-on experience with creating and maintaining databases; using Access and SQLite as our database systems. This course is intended for students interested in databases within the context of healthcare informatics, health information technology, and healthcare.
Career Outlook
Possible job opportunities for student in this pathway include: Health Information Manager, Clinical Data Manager, Clinical Data Analyst, Healthcare Data Analyst.
Consult with Graduate Program Director to determine which courses align with your professional goals.
Download the Academic Planning Form as unofficial guidance in planning your Data Science master’s program.
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