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Identical coursesMedical Information Systems (B-KUL-H03K5A)
Bellon Erwin (coordinator) | Bellon Erwin | Van den Bosch Bart Aims
After successfully having completed this course, the student:
- Knows how information systems are used in the daily practice of a hospital, especially in the contexts of the electronic medical record, for supporting workflow, and for supporting the cooperation between healthcare actors.
- Recognizes in which ways management structures in the hospital influence the approach to IT and the architecture of the information systems (including their integration).
- Understands basic concepts of databases and data modeling, of data security in medical setting, and of systems for medical coding and classifying.
- Can situate terms such as medical ontologies, evidence-based medicine, clinical pathways, and physician order entry.
- Has an overview of how multimedia data, particularly images, are used in a hospital (or will be used in the foreseeable future).
- Has quite thorough knowledge about the support needed for working with diagnostic images (PACS – ‘Picture Archiving and Communication Systems’), as well with respect to the required technology, the organization of the process, as the applicable standards (with emphasis on the DICOM standard).
- Can explain the practical, often organizational, constraints inherent in different approaches to for the exchange of medical data using telematics.
- Can situate recent initiatives for exchanging and sharing medical information in Belgium (‘eHealth’).
Previous knowledge
Basic knowledge of informatics (a.o. general concepts concerning networks, data storage...)
Preliminary conditions
The course of the core programme 'Medical imaging and image analysis' of this programme is a useful preparation to a part of the contents of this course (where the emphasis is on management of medical imagery), but it is not indispensable.
Identical courses
This course is identical to the following courses:
H0O27A : Medical Information Systems
Is included in these courses of study
Activities
3 ects. Medical Information Systems (B-KUL-H03K5a)
Content
This course is about how physicians and other healthcare actors deal with different kinds of information, and how we can support them for those tasks through IT. Diagnostic images are discussed in more detail because their use in digital form throughout the medical process is still relatively recent and because they impose specific requirements on technology and user interfaces.
The emphasis is on global aspects of data management and (tele) communication, in contrast to the ‘internal’ aspects of the data. For example, for images properties such as resolution or bit depth are used but the course does not discuss algorithms to extract information from the individual pixels. Image processing and analysis are a topic of other courses. This course also is about how technology is used rather than about technology itself. Experimental methods to extract information out of text or images are only mentioned in passing.
The teachers are part of the team that realizes the medical information system of the University Hospitals Leuven. The lessons start from the requirements and challenges in daily routine, especially that in a hospital. That does not imply any emphasis on presenting cookbook solutions. It is the intention, however, to emphasize the restrictions imposed by this particular context (with, from IT perspective, usually difficult users, highly flexible processes, and unfavorable management structure).
The lectures are illustrated using systems that work in daily practice, often in the University Hospitals Leuven. Purpose is explicitly to differentiate between what is (currently) realistic and what could be done theoretically but for which practical application is still in the future.
Evaluation
Evaluation: Medical Information Systems (B-KUL-H23K5a)
Explanation
[Must be updated. Waiting for feedback about Dutch version.]