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

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.