News Archive

The School of Health Population offers the following courses for staff and students interested in analysis of health data:
1) Health Informatics (14 - 18 December 2009);
2) Advanced Analysis of Linked Health Data (7 - 11 December 2009).

Health Informatics

Health informatics is a relatively new scientific discipline that incorporates knowledge from biomedicine, computer science, information science, psychology, business and other fields.
It deals with the systematic processing of data, information and knowledge in health in order to improve decision making. It is both multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary.

With ever-increasing complexity of health care and pressures on health professionals to do more with less, health informatics principles and information technologies are becoming more important. Moreover, the storage, processing and communication of health information directly affect the quality of delivered health care.

Course outline:
This course provides an overview of this broad field with an emphasis on fundamental principles as well as health information technologies. It teaches important concepts in health informatics and computing, including: modelling of health, communication theory, information retrieval, medical decision making, terminology and standards, evaluation, ethics, computer hardware and software.
It also examines applications of health informatics such as electronic medical records, clinical decision support systems and telemedicine.
This is a five-day course consisting of lectures, small group tutorials and computer lab work.

Who should attend?
Health informatics is short of specifically trained individuals nationally and globally. This course provides the foundation for those who wish to begin a career in health informatics. It will also appeal to health care and information technology people who wish to cross over into health informatics. It will be informative to anyone who has a curiosity about this emerging and diverse field.

For further information or to enrol please visit the website .

Advanced Analysis of Linked Health Data

This is an intensive five-day course on the theory and practice of analysis of large sets of linked administrative health data at an intermediate to advanced level.

Course outline
Advanced principles of health care epidemiology are combined with hands-on practical exercises in the implementation of computing solutions.
Professor Holman provides students with a theoretical grounding in the classroom on each topic, followed by a training session on the corresponding technological computing solutions. Students use fictitious but realistic linked data files on CD-ROM in the hands-on exercises.
Professor Preen is available in the computing laboratory session each afternoon and conducts an end-of-day plenary discussion where he and class participants share perspectives on how to problem-solve complex research scenarios.

For further information or to enrol please visit the website .