CIS 7000 Health, Healthcare and Technology

CIS 7000-01. Dr. Kevin Johnson (jokevin@upenn.edu)

Time:  Wednesdays 12:00-2:59 PM

Location: Towne 327

Click here for Syllabus 

TA:  Michael Yao: Office hours to be announced.

Overview:

This is a seminar course focusing on health and the healthcare system from an informatics/computer and information science lens.   

The course will focus on four topics:

1. an overview of the current healthcare system, including its structures, its processes, and outcomes of care
2. current challenges and opportunities within the health care system today, including topics such as provider burnout, genomic medicine, digital health, and AI in medicine
3. the past, present, and future of health-related devices, technology, and healthcare data
4. sociotechnical and engineered systems applied to health care

Format:  this class is a research seminar. Each lecture will begin with an overview of salient points about a topic, followed by a student-led discussion of computer science or informatics papers related to that topic above.  In special cases, guest lecturers will provide the topic overview. Students will be expected to lead discussions (one discussion only)  complete weekly reflections about each class, a complete a final project. Sample final projects may explore any of the major cross-cutting issues in health and healthcare.  Projects can include but are not limited to (1) designing/prototyping a project that applies their graduate student focus to a healthcare issue; (2) evaluating the applicability of a computational method to a healthcare challenge; (3) authoring an overview of computational approaches used to solve a healthcare issue, using any communication medium of interest (manuscript, podcast, etc.)

Intended Audience: Ph.D., Masters, and advanced undergraduate students with interests in programming systems, data science methods, artificial intelligence, or related topics that might be applicable to health care.  The course will have 30 slots by permit only.

Prerequisites: there are no specific coursework requirements. Students are expected to have some prior programming experience and should be able to read and interpret engineering and informatics-oriented papers.

Grading:  We will emphasize exposing engineers to problems and challenges inherent in the healthcare domain that are amenable to new engineering methods. In that light, there will be no exams. Students who complete assignments on time and do a satisfactory job in their discussions, project proposal, and final project can expect an A. Grading will be influenced by participation in class. We will not use a curve, so there will be no limit to the number of students who qualify for a particular grade.