Medical University of South Carolina

College of Health Professions

Division of Health Informatics
Master of Science in Health Informatics (MSHI) Program
HIN-704
Health Care DataContent, Standards and Knowledge Discovery
Course Information
Credit Hours: 3
Semester: Spring, 2016
Prerequisites: None
Course Status: Required
Course Placement: First year
Class Meets: Online, with one weekend on-campus session
Instructor Contact Information
Instructor: Robert J. Steele, PhD, Professor
Faculty Office: B407 CHP
Office Phone Number: 792-9218
Office Hours: By appointment
Fax Number: (843) 792-3327
E-Mail: steelerj@musc.edu

Course Description
This course provides an overview of various types of health care data, different strategies for
representing data, information and knowledge including terminologies and ontologies, health
data standards, database concepts (data modeling, relational databases, and structured query
language), clinical data warehouses, big data systems and data mining. Students explore
knowledge discovery in the context of the differing data and system types.

Course Objectives
By the end of the course the student will be able to do the following:
1. Distinguish and discuss the role of ontologies and terminology in organizing health
data and for interoperability
2. Identify, classify and discuss the major specific healthcare data representation
standards and ontologies
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3. Discuss the relationships between these standards and the relative role of each in
health information systems and interoperability
4. Understand and discuss the nature of meta-data in the health domain
5. Discuss and compare information retrieval and database querying in the context of
health information
6. Discuss and describe data warehouse querying
7. Discuss in detail big data architectures and algorithms
8. Demonstrate an ability to carry out data querying
9. Discuss and describe the fundamentals of knowledge discovery
10. Apply understanding so as to be able to carry out knowledge discovery for different
health data types and systems
11. Apply understanding so as to be able to carry out knowledge discovery in big data
systems
12. Discuss and classify the cybersecurity issues and threats in the healthcare domain
13. Describe best practices to defend against cybersecurity threats in healthcare

Readings and Course Resources

Required text: None

All readings will be provided in electronic form via the courses Moodle Web site or will be
distributed in the on-campus session

Assignments and Grading Criteria:

Mid-term Examination
Online Discussions & Attendance
Online Exercise
Final Examination

30%
20%
10%
40%

1.

Midterm examination A midterm examination will be given on-line during Week 7. The
midterm examination will require responses to short answer and multiple-choice questions.
This examination will cover course material covered up until and including Week 6 including the
written materials, the narrated PowerPoint slide presentations, other recordings and the
materials covered during the on-campus session.

2.

Online discussions and attendance and participation at the on-campus session

Participation in online discussion will constitute a critical component of assessment.

Students may be required to answer a specific question posed by the instructor and
engage with their peers in the online discussion. A rubric will be provided to indicate
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how such participation will be assessed. In addition, each students diligence in

reviewing unit narrated PowerPoint files and supplemental reading material (as noted in
Moodle website contact records available to the instructor) will be part of the graded
class participation.
Students are required to attend the on-campus session, and actively participate in class
discussions and problem-solving.
3. Online Exercise An assessment to test understanding of the knowledge discovery content
covered.
4. Final Examination In the examination, it will be necessary for students to demonstrate factual
mastery and creative synthesis / analysis of the course material, as well as their own conclusions
and judgments. It can assess materials from all preceding weeks.

Course Schedule/ Topics

Class Schedule Spring, 2016

Date

Week 1 Week
starting Tues Jan 5th

Topic/ Assignment

Introduction to Course
-

Week 2 Week
starting Jan 11th

Review of Syllabus and Course Expectations

Introduction to Health Data Standards

-

Standards
Ontologies
Meta-data

Week 3 Week

starting Jan 18th

Health Data Standards

-

On-campus Session
Thurs Jan 21st Sun
Jan 24th

Week 4 Week
starting Jan 25th

Week 5 Week
starting Feb 1st

Week 6 Week
starting Feb 8th

Week 7 Week
starting Feb 15th

Week 8 Week
starting Feb 22nd

Ontologies
- Vocabularies
- Capturing rich data

Querying of Clinical Data Warehouses

- Query languages
- Architecture

Querying of Big Data Systems

Mid-term Exam

Introduction to Knowledge Discovery

-

Week 9 Week
starting Feb 29th

Roles of and relationships between different health data

standards
Implications for data processing

Fundamentals of knowledge discovery

Data mining introduction

Introduction to Visualization

Week 10 Week
starting Mar 7th

Knowledge Discovery for Different Data Architectures

-

Week starting Mar

14th

Week 11 Week
starting Mar 21st

Clinical Data Warehouses

Big Data Systems

SPRING BREAK

Value
- Defining value
- Its different metrics for different stakeholders
Online Exercise

Week 12 Week
starting Mar 28th

Week 13 Week
starting Apr 4th

Week 14 Week
starting Apr 11th

Week 15 Week
starting Apr 18th

Knowledge Discovery Continued

- Information retrieval versus database querying

Cyber Security for Health Data

Defending Against Cyber Security Breaches

Final Examination

E-value Statement

It is a requirement of the Medical University and the College of Health Professions that each student
complete an on-line evaluation of this course. An e-mail will be sent to your MUSC e-mail account prior
to the end of the course providing you with a link to the on-line course evaluation. The evaluation is
short and should only take a few minutes of your time. We expect your participation as a mechanism to
ensure that we continue to improve the educational quality of every course and program in the College
of Health Professions. We appreciate your efforts to keep all comments constructive and
professional. Please be assured that all student input is completely confidential. There is no
mechanism to track comments or scores back to a particular student. Faculty and program directors will
only receive a summary of the scores and a summary of the typed comments.

Honor Policy

Students are expected to abide by the MUSC Honor Code. Work submitted must be original, reflect the
students individual effort (unless working on a group project), and be completed for the specific
purpose of fulfilling the assignments for this particular course.
http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/esl/studentprograms/honorcode/

Instructional Strategies:

Narrated power-point presentations

Audio Recordings
Readings
On-campus session (one weekend)
Guest lectures
Case-studies