Health Informatics Interdisciplinary Studies Certificate | Northwestern SPS - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

The course provides knowledge of the key components of health care in the United States—the policy, economic, and societal forces that shape health care delivery. The course serves as an introduction to elements of the American health care system, including the provider components, the financing of health care, the basic structure of public policy making and public health systems, a comparative analysis of the American system to health care systems of other countries, and the legal and regulatory framework within the American health care system functions. In addition to the structural components of the system, the course reviews current issues within the American health care system, including public health, preparedness, quality of health care, health reform, payment mechanisms, and consumerism.

Provides insight into the clinical care process. Designed for students not previously involved in clinical medicine as a nurse, pharmacist, or physician, as well as those trained in medicine outside the U.S. Includes basic medical terminology and introductory psychophysiology. Topics include eliciting information from patients, synthesizing history and physical examination, decision making for ordering tests, establishing diagnoses, treatment planning, integrating evidence-based medicine, and using an intelligent medical record in a complex environment.

The course is an introductory survey of fundamentals of health information technology. Topics center on how information technology enables patient care, how information technology is used by healthcare providers and caregivers, and it’s use to fuel modern health care organizations. This course provides an overview of health informatics with emphasis on the factors that helped create and sustain this new field, the key players involved, and the impact health information technology is having on the delivery of care in a rapidly changing healthcare marketplace.

We explore a range of critical health care informatics topics, including: electronic health records, health information exchange, how health information technology impacts quality of care and patient safety, big data and predictive analytics, clinical decision support and knowledge management, regulatory issues, consumerism and technology, systems integration, and virtual health. The course also explores emerging and new uses of technology.

This course examines various aspects of healthcare delivery, with a special focus on healthcare operations and its management to confront the many challenges faced by modern healthcare organizations today with the limited resources at their disposal.  Students learn about the role of strategic planning and governance, interdisciplinary care, patient safety and quality improvement, emergency preparedness, cybersecurity, finance, change management, information technology and data analytics. 

Recommended taking after MHI 401- American Health Care System and MHI 403 - Introduction to Health Informatics

This course provides concepts and practical examples of health care information interoperability, standard terminologies, messaging standards, health information exchanges (HIEs), and projects deploying these capabilities. Topics covered by the course include the importance of standards; information architecture and application programming interfaces (APIs); principles and examples of standard terminologies; current messaging standards; and their use in health information exchanges for coordination of care and payment reform. Core principles, challenges, benefits, and limitations will be discussed in each of these topics.

This course provides an introduction to decision analysis with an emphasis on medical decision-making and elements of human cognition under uncertainty. Topics include structuring decision problems and developing creative decision options, quantifying uncertainty and preferences, and combining them to arrive at optimal decisions. Also provides the foundation needed to apply the methods of decision analysis in decision support systems and intelligent systems. Students become familiar with the graphical display of medical information, decision analysis and modeling, evidence-based medicine, Bayes' theorem, knowledge-based systems, learning systems, lexicons, coding and structured data entry, and data mining techniques.

The American health care landscape is incredibly dynamic, rapidly evolving, and highly regulated. This course explores the intersection of compelling legal, ethical, and social facets that impact the health care enterprise. The content, research, and group discussions support informaticists in building knowledge they need to navigate competing interests, underlying ethical principles, and key regulatory requirements. The course integrates changing financing paradigms, reimagined health care services delivery systems, the tension between precision medicine and population health, and evolving consumer expectations in the digital age. The challenges of safeguarding individual privacy rights and data security are assessed, along with the promise of innovative public-private partnerships that are shaping health informatics in the Learning Health Care System.

A practical course on acquiring and assessing new medical technology, either as a vendor who needs to know how to meet the expectations of customers and their acquisition requirements or as a customer/practitioner who must know how to validate technology selections and implementations. Topics include cost analysis and justification, economic models, capital purchase, leasing strategies, the application service provider or risk-sharing model, purchase agreements and contracts, writing a RFP, analyzing a RFP response, and industry business trends.

In this course, we will introduce you to the emerging practice area of Consumer eHealth, the aim of which is to empower consumers to better manage and influence their health and wellness, access healthcare services, and improve interactions with their caregivers by leveraging digital health solutions and services.  Topics include solutions that emphasize the consumer experience (CX), new consumer access models and modalities, consumer-oriented technologies and systems such as APPs and health and wellness devices and platforms, HIPAA-compliant cloud based services, the use of innovative wearables (i.e., electronic tattoos), internables/ingestibles and consumables, and behavioral management solutions such a Digiceuticals and PHRs.  Additional topics include patient generated healthcare data (PGHD) and the evolution of consumer driven healthcare in the United States: specifically, evaluating how a connected society will enable previously unattainable levels of patient/provider inter-activity.