6.872/HST.950 Syllabus

Fall term 2006

Readings will be from papers provided on the class web site and the text, Shortliffe, E.H., et al. Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine, 3rd Ed. Springer, 2006. Because the 3rd edition was not available at the start of class, we provided assigned chapters from the 2nd edition on-line. Because of copyright issues, these are available only to students in the class.

Note: The syllabus is still tentative and will be evolving as we get commitments from guest lecturers, decide on reading assignments, etc.

Class#
Date
Lecturer Topic Readings to be done before class Assignments, notes, ...
1
9/7
psz Introduction: Goals and organization of the healthcare system. Relationship between clinical care and research in biomedicine. How research is done in the era of high-throughput genetic and genomic data. Shortliffe, Ch. 2. Ch 1 provides rudimentary background info. (Obviously, this one time, you may read these after class!)  
2
9/12
psz Clinical Data, Organization and Standards What is HL7? (describes older, pre-3.0 version, which is in common use), What is HL7? (describes broader current standard-setting process), DICOM Overview, Shortliffe, Ch 9 HW1 posted
3
9/14
psz Terminologies, Coding, and Natural Language Processing Shortliffe, Ch. 6. Medical Natural Language Processing (notes).  
4
9/19
mfr Introduction to BioInformatics Statistics and Functional Genomics  
5
9/21
mfr The Genome SNPs, Haplotype Tagging  
6
9/26
mfr Sequencing Complex Traits, Genetic dissection & prognosis HW1 due
7
9/28
Hamish Fraser, Partners in Health Telemedicine and Health Records for the Developing World: HIV & MDR-TB treatment, and OpenMRS Implementing EMR for Developing Countries, Open-source EMR for DC, Impact of a TB EMR System in Peru HW2 posted
8
10/3
Alvin Kho Gene Expression I: High-Throughput Measurement Methods    
9
10/5
Alvin Kho Gene Expression II: Applications to Cancer Biology Cancer Stem Cells: An Old Idea—A Paradigm Shift (alternative source, if you can't download that file for free), Why we are losing the war on cancer? Predicting Survival within the Lung Cancer Histopathological Hierarchy Using a Multi-Scale Genomic Model of Development  
--
10/10
  Columbus Day: Class Holiday    
10
10/12
Keith Strier, Deloitte The Health IT Industry's View Complexity and the Adoption of Innovation in Health Care, Health Care Industry Pays Steep Price for Ignoring IT, EHRs are the problem, not the solution HW2 due
11
10/17
Gil Alterovitz Proteomics Proteomics HW3 posted
12
10/19
Gil Alterovitz Interactomics Topological Analysis of Biomolecular Networks  
13
10/24
Isaac Kohane Genetic Privacy GenePing, Health-Information Altruists — A Potentially Critical Resource (+ letter followup)  
14
10/26
psz Security, Privacy and Confidentiality National Standards to Protect the Privacy of Personal Health Information (see especially the Privacy Rule summary and research descriptions) HW3 due
15
10/31
Ken Mandl Biosurveillance and Public Health Implementing Syndromic Surveillance: A Practical Guide Informed by the Early Experience, and Empirical Evidence for the Effect of Airline Travel on Inter-Regional Influenze Spread in the United States  
16
11/2
psz Decision Support I Chapter 3 in text, Owens & Sox, Probabilistic Clinical Reasoning.  
17
11/7
John Halamka, Caregroup National Health Information Infrastructure Health Care IT Collaboration, e-Prescribing  
18
11/9
psz Decision Support II Pople, H. "Heuristic Methods for Imposing Structure on Ill-Structured Problems: The Structuring of Medical Diagnostics"  
19
11/14
Asher Schachter Predictive modeling in drug development

Clinical trial data: to disclose or not to disclose?
Clinical forecasting in drug development

(AMIA Meeting, Washington DC)
20
11/16
psz Patient Monitoring Chapter 17 in text, Gardner & Shabot, "Patient Monitoring Systems".  
21
11/21
psz Workflow and Systematizing Health Care Interruptive Communication, Interdisciplinary communication as a source of medical error, Chapter 4, in text Last class before drop date (11/22).
--
11/23
  Thanksgiving: Class Holiday    
22
11/28
psz Patient Identification, registries, data sharing A Theory for Record Linkage  
23
11/30
psz Natural Language Processing on Clinical Data Chapter 8, in text  
24
12/5
psz Decision Support III (future trends) Text, Chapters 9 (Imaging) and 24 (Fagan and Shortliffe's prognostications)  
25
12/7
  Student Project Presentations    
26
12/12
  Student Project Presentations