• Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom

The goal of the course is to enable students to acquire expertise in the engineering methodologies and processes required for management of medical and clinical data for clinical, research, design and development purposes. The basic processes of health care data management are described in order to make the student able to work in clinical environment, inside the health care system, and in companies developing medical devices and services.

Expected learning outcomes

Lectures and exercise sessions will allow students to:

• Analyze and understand the goals, assumptions and requirements associated to a data-base system for health applications (DD1)
• Model formally the data-base, define its architecture and design using proper tools (DD1)
• Model heath care processes through proper tools (DD1)
• Be familiar with the main standards for medical data (DD1)
• Be familiar with the main health-care applications related to Medical Informatics (DD1)

The project laboratory will allow students to (DD2):

• Use the basic tools for data base design and management
• Define requirement specifications for a given application
• Write design specification documents
• Develop the applications

 MEDICAL INFORMATICS [1]

Topics

Electronic health record (EHR)

• The structure of the EHR for hospital departments
• Data types

Clinical and medical databases

• Basic definition
• Databases lifecycle
• Databases management systems (DBMS)
• Relational algebra
• Logical data models: relational, hierarchical, network, object oriented
• Entity relationship diagrams
• Database design methodology: conceptual and logical design, translation to database schema
• Examples of clinical and medical databases

Medical decision support systems.

• Automatization of the medical design process.
• Computerized clinical practice guidelines

Protection of medical data

• Basic concepts on security and privacy for clinical data

Interoperability and standards for medical informatics

• Definition of standards and standard lifecycle
• Description of standard organizations for Medical Informatics and Electrical field, at Italian, European and World level.
• HL7 standard
• DICOM standard

MEDICAL INFORMATICS [2]

Health care processes

• Definition of clinical and health-care processes including information and telecommunication requirements
• Health care process modelling
• Unified Model Language (UML)
• Application examples

Same specific applications of the different topics will be further illustrated through invited seminars

A project laboratory is integral part of the course. The objective of projects is to help students in applying the approaches and principles taught in class. A project will be assigned through the semester. Project artifacts are expected to be released at fixed deadlines  that will be defined by the time the project will be assigned. The evaluation of projects will be based on the produced artifacts (documentation, code, demos, …) and on a presentation. The project laboratory will include class discussions supervised by the course instructor and by some tutors.

Students who cannot take part in the project laboratory in this semester can work at the project on their own and present project material at the exam. In this case, no support by project tutors will be possible. 

Pre-requisites

The contents of the course Informatica e Elememnti di Informatica Medica (or equivalent) are pre-requisites for the course

The attendance to the lessons and laboratory sessions is strongly recommended.

The written final exam is mandatory and based on the topics of this syllabus.  

The ability of comprehensively describing in written form the course topics, using the appropriate terms and giving attention to the relevant conceptual aspects, is a fundamental element for a positive evaluation.

The elective laboratory project presentation is part of the final evaluation.