6.872/HST.950 Medical Computing
Spring 2003

Medical science and practice in the age of automation and the genome: Present and Future

Class Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00am -12:30pm, 36-112.

Instructors:

Peter Szolovits, PhD (psz@mit.edu)   MIT LCS Clinical Decision Making Group
Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD (isaac_kohane@harvard.edu)   Children's Hospital Informatics Program
Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD (machado@dsg.bwh.harvard.edu)   BWH Decision Systems Group

Class Secretary:

Fern DeOliveira (fernd@mit.edu) 253-5860

Text:

Shortliffe EH, Perreault LE, Wiederhold G and Fagan LM, Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine, 2nd Edition. Springer 2001.
Sold online at: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Quantum

Schedule (tentative--subject to revision as we progress):

Class Date Topic Lecturer Readings Assignments
(Temp: Unavailable)
1 Feb. 4 Introduction: Nature of Modern Medicine and Medical Practice Peter Szolovits Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Shortliffe.  
2 Feb. 6 Genomics in Medicine: Centrality of Bioinformatics Isaac Kohane Human Genome Project, Human Variation, Microarrays and Functional Genomics, Classification  
3 Feb. 11 Workflow and Decision Support and Data Gathering Isaac Kohane Workflow, ethnography, communication, integration  
4 Feb. 13 Patient Identification Peter Szolovits Read Chapters 6, 9 & 10 of Shortliffe.
Record Linkage Theory (optional)
 
  Feb. 18 NO CLASS--Monday schedule of classes due to Presidents' Day
5 Feb. 20 Countering Bioterrorism Ken Mandl Chapter 11 of Shortliffe Pete
6 Feb. 25 Nature of Medical Data: Where it is and Where it is Not Peter Szolovits    
7 Feb. 27 Integration and data sharing or medical data for quality improvement John Halamka    
8 Mar. 4 Diagnosis, standards, codification Peter Szolovits Chapters 12 and 14 of Shortliffe  
9 Mar. 6 Patient data confidentiality and security Peter Szolovits Chapter 7 of Shortliffe and Privacy Confidentiality and EMR. Optional For the Record.  
10 Mar. 11 Decreasing Variability in Health Care Lucila Ohno-Machado    
11 Mar. 13 Computerized Physician Order Entry:
Using Technology To Improve Patient Safety
David Bates    
12 Mar. 18 Computing Support for the Enterprise John Glaser   Pete
13 Mar. 20 Telemedicine Hamish Fraser Chapter 14 of Shortliffe Pete
  Mar. 25& 27 NO CLASSES--MIT Spring Break
14 Apr. 1 Decision analysis and decision support Peter Szolovits Chapters 15 and 16 of Shortliffe  
15 Apr. 3 Expert systems Peter Szolovits    
16 Apr. 8 Advanced Expert Systems Peter Szolovits Chapters 12 and 13 of Shortliffe  
17 Apr. 10 Patient Monitoring Peter Szolovits    

18

Apr. 15 Genomic Medicine I:
Introduction to Genomics
Atul Butte    
19 Apr. 17 Genomic Medicine II:
Expression Arrays, Gene Clustering and Distance Metrics
Isaac Kohane Support Vector Machines  
  Apr. 22 NO CLASS--Patriots Day Vacation
20 Apr. 24 Genomic Medicine III:
Population Genetics in the Post Genomic Era
Marco Ramoni Array of Hope, Complex Traits, SNPs and the Human Genome Pete
21 Apr. 29 Genomic Medicine IV:
Linking Genotypes and Phenotypes
Peter Park    
22 May 1 Genomic Medicine V:
Reverse Engineering
Zoltan Szallasi Genetic Networks (read chapter 5, page 23)  
23 May 6 Student Presentations

 
24 May 8 Student Presentations

 
25 May 13 Student Presentations  
 
26 May 15 Student Presentations

 

Legend for links in table:

Homework:

We plan to give a handful of modest homework assignments to complement and reinforce material taught in the class.  Links to the assignments (and eventually, solutions) will appear in the schedule above.  You must do the homework problems on your own.  Of course you may ask for help and advice from classmates, but the final work that you turn in and all the words used to describe it must be your own.

Projects:

The last four class sessions will be an opportunity for students to present the results of significant research projects done for the class.  We encourage you to team up (in teams of two or three students) to work on projects, and teams that span students with different interests, skills and approaches are encouraged.  Some reasonable illustrative project topics are listed here.