HIT 421: Introduction to Health Informatics

This course covers fundamental concepts related to the role of health informatics (HIT) in modern healthcare, including how data is generated, managed, and utilized. The course is meant to provide an introduction to a wide array of topics within health informatics, across a range of settings from hospitals to clinical research to community-based public health and beyond. We will look not only at the technical side, but also at the interaction of people, information, and systems within healthcare. Course topics will include: different kinds of health data, types of healthcare systems, various actors within healthcare (doctors, patients, payors etc.), role of data science and machine learning in healthcare, AI for health, digital health technology, public health informatics, bioinformatics, clinical research systems, ethics, and types of careers in health informatics. The goal of the course is for students to develop a broad understanding of how all these topics interconnect in the practice of modern health informatics, and to lay the foundation for students to take more advanced courses in HIT in the future.