OVERVIEW

Digital Health, or Digital Healthcare, is a broad, multidisciplinary subject that includes concepts from the intersection of technology and healthcare. Digital Health applies digital transformation to the healthcare sector, incorporating software, hardware and services. Under its umbrella, Digital Health includes mobile health technologies, electronic health records (EHR), electronic health record tools, telemedicine, and personalised medicine technologies.
Building on the introductory content presented in the previous Technologies for Personalised Medicine course, this course aims to provide the theoretical, technological and practical foundations for addressing the topics described in the previous section

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The increasing introduction of computing techniques into biomedical environments will require that well-trained individuals be available not only to teach students, but also to design, develop, select, and manage the biomedical-computing systems of tomorrow. There is a wide range of context- dependent computing issues that people can appreciate only by working on problems defined by the healthcare setting and its constraints. With this aims, the course will present typical application of information sciences to medical issues (like electronical health record systems, public vs consumer health informatics, health information infrastructure, telehealth) considering some basic technologies like: database systems, standard definition both at technical and at semantic level, internet based communication, natural language processing, decision support systems.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The aim of the teaching is to provide students with adequate tools for:

• Acquiring the theoretical foundations of the major elements constituting the Digital Health ecosystem
• Acquisition of the practical elements of clinical data sharing
• Knowledge of medical informatics standards
• Conscious application of the these standards
• To know and have the appropriate knowledge for the application of the electronic health record

Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course the student will

• know the most important applications of information technology in the field of health that can enable the development of Digital Health
• know the major standards that allow the exchange of data of medical interest and for clinical research
• analyse and design simple systems for processing medical and clinical data based on database technology
• analyse and design simple user interfaces for processing the data mentioned in the previous point addressed to users who may not have adequate digital literacy
• discuss the most recent innovations in the field of Digital Health

Open badge: competence in design creation

PREREQUISITES

• General informatics
• Databases
• Object oriented programming languages
• Operating systems
• Computer networks

TEACHING METHODS

The course is developed in parallel on two tracks.

In the first, more theoretical, the various topics are presented with traditional lessons, there are also some seminars by Italian and foreign experts on specific topics.

In the second, more practical, teaching is carried out in a participatory way, developing together with the students increasingly concrete examples of parts of databases of significant interest in Medical Information Technology and their (standardized) interfaces using web services.

Working students and students with certification of DSA, disability or other special educational needs are advised to contact the teacher at the beginning of the course to agree on teaching and exam methods which, in compliance with the teaching objectives, take into account the methods of individual learning.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

• Biomedical Data: Their Acquisition, Storage, and Use
• Human-Computer Interaction, Usability, and Workflow
• Standards in Biomedical Informatics
• Natural Language Processing for Health-Related Texts
• Personal Health Informatics
• Evaluation of Biomedical and Health Information Resources
• Electronic Health Records
• Health Information Infrastructure
• Management of Information in Health Care Organizations
• Patient-Centered Care Systems
• Population and Public Health Informatics
• mHealth and Applications
• Telemedicine and Telehealth
• Information Retrieval
• Clinical Decision-Support Systems
• Clinical Research Informatics
• Precision Medicine and Informatics

• Practical Clinical Data Management
• Examples of data treatment through the WEB

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• E. H. Shortliffe, J. J. Cimino (Editors), M. F. Chiang (Co-Editor) “Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine” Fifth Edition, 2021, Cham (Switzerland), Springer
• Silberschatz, H. Korth, S. Sudarshan “Database Systems Concept” Seventh Edition, 2020, New York, Mc Grow Hill
• N. Harrison “SQL Queries Succinctly”, 2017, Syncfusion
• D. Roth, J. Fritz, T. Southwick “Blazor for ASP.NET Web Forms Developers” 2021, Microsoft

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

https://easyacademy.unige.it/portalestudenti/index.php?view=easycourse&_lang=it&include=corso

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

• Discussion on the theoretical topics listed in the syllabus to assess the student's knowledge of the most important applications of information technology in the field of health that can enable the development of Digital Health and the major standards that enable the exchange of data of medical interest and clinical research
• Discussion of the practical applications developed during the lessons to assess the student's ability to analyse and design simple systems for processing medical and clinical data based on database technology and simple user interfaces for processing medical and clinical data addressed to users who may not have adequate digital literacy
• Presentation of a recent scientific article on the subjects covered in the course to assess the student's ability to discuss the latest innovations in the field of Digital Health

ASSESSMENT METHODS

In the final practical interview, all the components of the system developed during the lessons relating to a specific topic will be analyzed. The analysis skills of the developed codes and the ability to change the same codes as the requirements change will be evaluated.

In the theoretical interview, the ability to connect between the various topics studied will be assessed, especially in order to test the propensity for complex design in the medical IT field.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Ask the professor for other information not included in the teaching schedule