• 098464 - E-HEALTH APPLICATIONS

e-Health is defined as the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for health. In the context of ageing population and increase in chronic patients-related healthcare expenditure, ICT represents a key component for ensuring quality, safety, access and efficiency, also stimulating new paradigms of care, from a paternalistic to a collaborative model, from acute care to prevention. The goal of the course is to enable students with relevant tools and concepts that are needed to master the complexity of ICT in healthcare in this continuously evolving field. Through the course, also practical projects will be proposed to groups of students, to stimulate their problem-solving, and giving an opportunity to present and discuss their work to an audience.

The course is structured in two parts, Methods and Applications, which are interleaved throughout  the semester.

Please note that this list is indicative and class topics may change due to teaching needs in this highly evolving field.

Introduction to e-health

• What is e-health?
• Concepts and definitions

• Types of e-health applications
• Overview, definitions and history of e-health and biomedical informatics

• A view on healthcare in EU in an aging society
• Success factors and barriers to e-health implementation
• Overview of e-health data
• Data types
• Data collection and recording
• Use of e-health data 

E-health for healthcare professionals

• E-health applications for healthcare professionals:
• Who are the healthcare professionals?
  • Different healthcare professionals and their way of using e-health
• Different types of e-health for healthcare professionals
• Decision making in e-health:
  • Integration of e-health information: cognitive science principles
  • Management of uncertainties for decision making
  • Electronic Medical Records / Electronic Health Records and the safety and quality of patient care
  • Clinical Decision Support Systems / Mining hospital data to predict patient outcomes
  • Electronic prescription and delivery / Electronic medications management
• Imaging informatics

E-health for patients

• Who is the patient?
  • Differences in patient groups
  • E-patients and empowerment
  • Patient literacy
• Patient data and ethics, e-health and ethics, the concept of privacy in EU and USA, security and confidentiality
• E-health applications for patients:
  • Personal Health Records / Clinical data linkage tools and services
  • Patient and family portal access to EMR systems - possibilities and challenges
  • Patient monitoring / E-health solutions for chronic disease management
  • Adherence
• Support groups and communities / Social media in health
• Mobile apps and medical devices: current legislation, open problems

E-health for lifestyle and prevention

• Consumer health informatics
• Body tracking and the Quantified Self
• E-mental health
• User-centred design and evaluation of health apps
• Ageing well with technology
• Persuasive design technology

Use of e-health data for research

• Medical literature retrieval: systematic review
• Registries of e-health data:
  • Issues in data collection and anonymization
  • Adherence to treatment guidelines
  • Reporting quality of care
• Use of e-health data for research:
  • Evidence-based medicine
  • Comparative effectiveness analysis
  • Large scale clinical trials
• Geospatial data in health
• E-health projects in low-income countries
• Big data for e-health

Design and implementation of e-health

• Technical demands on e-health systems
• Technical infrastructure
• e-health system architecture

• Health informatics standards and terminologies
• DICOM
• HL7
• Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)
• Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)
• Systematized Nomenclature for Medicine (SNOMED CT)

• Information retrieval techniques for data-mining of medical records
• Natural language processing

A project laboratory is mandatory and is an integral part of the course. The objective of projects is to give the students the opportunity to tackle a real problem using concepts learned in class, working in small groups and organizing their work. Projects will be assigned at the beginning of the semester and are expected to be given in at fixed deadlines defined by the time the project will be assigned. The evaluation of projects will be based on the produced reports and on a final presentation.

Students are required to know the basic principles of programming.

The assessment will be based on a written exam, covering the two parts of the integrated course (Methods and Applications) at the end of the course, and on the projects developed in the laboratory part of the course. These projects will be presented to the instructor and colleagues at the end of the course. The scores of the written exam and of the project part, weighting each for 50% of the final score, will be summed to compute the total score. In addition, optional oral exam is allowed with a +/- 3 points range modification on the total score.