6.893--Medical Computing

Course Announcement

This class will analyze the computational needs of clinical medicine, review the history of interesting systems and approaches that have begun to support those needs, and present the computer technologies that appear most applicable to contributing to revolutionary advances. We will also have numerous real databases available from Boston-area hospitals, and the participation of doctors from those institutions who are currently developing new systems and applications.

Some of the homework and a final paper will be based on innovative applications of sophisticated computing techniques to real clinical data. We will explore topics in automated diagnosis, monitoring, detection of errors in treatment, learning new models from data, personalizing explanations to specific patients, etc. We will also examine the architectures of recently-built comprehensive clinical information systems.

Students are expected to have a flexible competence in programming, because assignments will involve use of diverse databases and programming languages. A knowledge of artificial intelligence at the level of 6.034 will also be assumed, as many AI techniques will find application in the class material. The class is open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and will qualify for Graduate H credit.

Administrivia

Textbook for the class will be Shortliffe, et al., Medical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care, Addison-Wesley 1990. It is now available from Quantum Books (not from the Coop, I think) for $45.95, which is about 7% off list.

Class notes will regularly be posted on the World-Wide Web at URL: http://www.medg.lcs.mit.edu/courses/6893-S95/6893.html (this file).
In general, we will not be able to post copyrighted material, but notes, class lists, outlines, and reading lists will appear there. Members of the class interested in posting material or providing cross-references to other URL's should please contact me. See material contributed thus far, below.

Course conduct and grading

The class will be "interactive," and students will be asked to make brief presentations at almost all class meetings.

Schedule

Contents

• Introduction--Health Care and Computing
• Nature of Clinical Data
• Hospital Information Systems
• Architectures for HIS
• Clinicians' Workstation
  Dr. Isaac Kohane discussed with the class on Monday, 2/27/95, the design and performance of an Electronic Medical Record Systems (EMRS), termed the Clinician's Workstation (CWS). A copy of Kohane's transparencies can be downloaded for your review. Click here to download files from the course ftp site.
• Data Storage Models and Standards (An example of a research project investigating interchange among disparate databases is the COIN Project at MIT's Sloan School.)
• Privacy and Security
• Software Engineering
• Understanding the Content of Medical Information
• Reasoning Based on Associations
  • Simple Bayesian Systems
  • Rule-based Systems
  • Frame-based Systems
  • Classification Systems
  • Case-based Reasoners
  • Bayesian Networks
  • Set-covering algorithms
  • Neural Nets and Other Tunable Systems
• Dealing with Time
  • Time-oriented databases
  • Repetitive decisions
  • Temporal queries
  • Trend detection
  • Consistency relations
  • Temporal truth maintenance
  • Markov and Semi-Markov models
  • Temporal Bayes networks
• Model-based reasoning
  • Physiologic models
  • Clinical Causal models
  • Semi-quantitative models
  • Qualitative models
  • Multi-level models
• Additional Representation Issues
  • Space
  • Uncertainty
  • Severity
  • Utility and Preference
• Learning
• Explanation and Justification
• Medical Education

References and Pointers

Columbia University's pointers to medical sites on the Web.

Duke University's Medical Informatics Links.

Stanford's CAMIS list of Medical Informatics Training Programs.

Thanks to Tom Lee for another pointer to Web Health Related Sites.

Jiri Schindler has collected a set of references on electronic medical record systems.

The following references about clinical practice guidelines were contributed to the MEDINF-L mailing list by Alvaro Margolis, M.D., Dept. of Medical Informatics, U. of Utah School of Medicine. He also points out that there is also on the Web a list of AHCPR clinical guidelines.

Here is an extensive set of notes for Columbia University's Introduction to Medical Informatics course on the Web. Here are some other Web sites I have found interesting:

Fellowships in Medical Informatics

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CPMC HOMEPAGE

Visible Human Project

Sunrise Home Page for Health Care Informatics Standards

CBR Medical Demos and Project Descriptions

Privacy and Integrity of Computerized Medical Records

MSDS Healthcare Standards Home Page

DOD Telemedicine: Federated Laboratory Intro