MSc/PGDip/PGCert Health Informatics (UCL/UoM Joint Award)

Please see information the UCL MSc Health Informatics page for details of course fees.

Fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance. Postgraduate fees information .

Additional costs include:

• the cost of travel to and from Manchester or London (depending on the module location and where you are based);
• accommodation costs.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

This module is taught at UCL.

This module provides a foundation for understanding health informatics in the wider health landscape and how it impacts on the delivery of healthcare. Students will gain an understanding of the concepts and skills required to deliver policy and strategy for high quality patient care, and an insight into organisational aspects affecting the use and application of health informatics. Students will also be introduced to the importance of information governance and the key policies and requirements when working in the health sector. 

This module provides a foundation for understanding health informatics in the wider health landscape and how it impacts on the delivery of healthcare. Students will gain an understanding of the concepts and skills required to deliver policy and strategy for high quality patient care, and an insight into organisational aspects affecting the use and application of health informatics. Students will also be introduced to the importance of information governance and the key policies and requirements when working in the health sector.

Students will learn

• Subject-Specific Knowledge

1.     Key aspects of how healthcare systems are organised, funded and regulated and how these relate to informatics

2.     Understand the flow of data/information and knowledge and its use across the health and social care system.

3.     Discuss systems and technologies in relation to current and future thinking around health systems.

4.     Understand information governance, cyber-security and issues of privacy and confidentiality.

• Intellectual, Academic and Research Skills

1.     Be aware of relevant clinical/health informatics literature.

2.     Critically appraise local strategies in a wider context of policies and legislation.

• Practical and Transferrable Skills

1.     Represent domain knowledge in a computable form, e.g., database schema, information model or ontology.

The module is delivered over nine weeks using Moodle as the Virtual Learning Environment. Students attend at UCL for an intensive block of three days of face to face teaching, usually in week four or five. Students on campus may attend two additional seminars, these are also live-streamed and recorded for other students. Formative and summative assignments are submitted via Moodle. 

Students complete two pieces of formative assessment. One is an outline specification for a piece of data-driven analytical work (for example the design of a data analysis using linked primary and secondary care databases). The second is an analysis of the dataflows in a hospital or primary care setting, presented as a diagram.