Department of Biomedical Informatics
AMIA 10X10 in Public Health Informatics
Overall Objectives and Rationale:
Public health informatics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses information technology and informatics methods to meet public health goals. To meet these goals and enhance the welfare of a community, public health practitioners need to develop skills and knowledge to optimize their contribution to improvements in public health informatics; similarly, informaticians need to understand the unique public health environment and opportunities for the application of informatics methods and tools. Public health is a resource-limited field that can benefit from the efficiencies gained by informatics and lessons learned from clinical informatics projects, and cannot afford the system failures observed in clinical settings. This course provides foundational knowledge relevant to public health informatics, and introduces students to skills, resources, and concepts that will allow them to be a life-long learner and work in this evolving field. The 10x10-Utah is led by Dr. Catherine Staes, faculty, Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah, but individual modules are taught by other faculty from the University of Utah, Utah Department of Health, and elsewhere. Dr. Staes was funded by the National Library of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop public health informatics training for the University of Utah informatics research academic program. This 10x10 course is based on the live public health informatics course taught to graduate students in informatics, public health and nursing.
Goal:
To introduce informatics and public health students/practitioners to informatics principles and their application to public health problems. Students will develop basic analysis and lifelong learning skills to engage in the evolving field of public health informatics.
Course Objectives
At the completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Describe the mission and practice of public health and identify opportunities to advance public health using informatics methods and tools
- Describe fundamental informatics principles and their application to public health.
- Examine standards relevant to public health and create design artifacts to enable system interoperability.
- Describe current and evolving public health surveillance systems and perform a basic system analysis.
- Describe the current and evolving relationship between clinical and public health systems, including needs, challenges, and opportunities.
- Examine roles required to develop and manage public health informatics projects and systems.
Course Logistics:
Blackboard Vista, the University of Utah’s online teaching resource, will be used to manage the course. Students will be given instructions to use Blackboard Vista after they enroll. All communication will be initiated from Blackboard Vista, so correctly specifying your email address and setting up the mail forward feature is critical for communication. Use the Blackboard email to communicate with the Instructor and TA so your emails do not get lost.
Next course offering: February 1 - May 28, 2012
Visit American Medical Informatics Association to learn more and to Register (AMIA) 10x10 website
Complete Syllabus for Spring 2011 Course
