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Transformational Technologies for
Biology, Medicine, and Health
HA&S 396A & MEBI 498A, Spring, '09

Assignment Calendar: (will be updated throughout the quarter)

Week of Topic Reading assignments Homeworks, exams
March 31 Intro & Motivation Tue: (none)
Thu: M Ball, 2007.
 
April 7 PHRs & EHRs Tue: Text, Chpt 1, sect 1 (thru p 21);
Chpt 2, sect 1-3;
Thu: Text, Chpt 12, sects 1-3;
 
April 14 Personal Health Tue: Pratt et al., 2006 Pedja Klasna, guest lecture
Thu: Halamka, 2008
Project #1 checkpoint due Thurs
April 21 Medical Imaging Tue: No reading
Thu: Text, Chpt 9.1 thru 9.3.3 & 9.4 & 9.5.3 & 9.6
Project #1 due Tues
April 28 Medical imaging Tue:Text, Chpt 18, sections 1 and 2.
Thu: No reading
Catalyst Exam #1: 4/30 & 5/1
May 5 Bio-Informatics & Biomedicine Tue: Text, chpt 22 (entire)
Thu: Pertsimlidis, 2002 Dhileep Sivam, guest lecture
Project #2 due Tues
May 12 Systems biology & the physiome Tue: Hunter 2003
Thu:Optional: Ideker, 2001 (pp. 343-355 & 364-366)
 
May 19 Public Health Informatics Tue: Text, chpt 15 (sects. 1-3 only)
Thu: Henning, 2003 & Mandl 2004
Project #3 due Tues
May 26 Public Health Informatics Tue: Hemelaar, 2006 Guest lecture, Neil Abernethy
Thu: No reading
 
June 2 Final review & Decision making under uncertainty Tue: No reading
Thu: Text, chpt 24 (entire)
 

Catalyst Exam #2:
6/2 & 6/3
Project #4 due Friday,
June 5

In the above calendar, "Text" refers to the Shortliffe textbook:

Shortliffe, EH & Cimino, JC (2006). Biomedical Informatics: Computer applications in health care and biomedicine (3rd edition). Springer.

All other reading assignments from the primary literature can be retrieved from the course Eres pages. (Please note: there are more readings on this site than those that are actually assigned!)

General expectations:

My goals for the assignments in the course are to (a) teach you something about the breadth of biomedical informatics research and (b) give you hands-on experience with some of the systems used in the field. I will teach the course largely as a research seminar -- this means that parts of most classes will include student-led discussion.

I expect you to be adult learners. I am assuming you want to be in class, and that you want to learn the material I'm advertising to teach. I will therefore also expect to learn from you -- teaching and learning work best when it is a two-way street.

Reading assignments:

In addition to (obviously) reading these prior to class, I also expect you to be able to discuss them in class. In some cases, this may require multiple readings; it certainly means that you must think about what you read, and perhaps taking some notes to help you offer discussion points and ideas during class. To help with this task, I am requiring you to write and post at least a couple of sentences or thoughts about each assigned reading to the class message board (Catalyst GoPost).

Thus, for each reading assignment listed above, please tell me (and your peers) something new that you learned from the reading, and optionally a follow-up question. You should certainly read other students' posts, and you may also reply or respond to these postings. (As specified on the grading page, class participation is 12% of your final grade.)

Exams:

The two exams will be conducted as Catalyst on-line (& open book) exams, and will therefore occur outside of the classroom. They will be primarily short-answer questions, and will be designed to evaluate your understanding of the broader concepts and over-arching themes in biomedical & health informatics. There will be no cummulative, final exam, nor any requirements during finals week.

Projects:

There are four projects, and each is described in a separate web page: see Project #1 , Project #2 , Project #3 and Project #4. Projects are to be handed in electronically, via the course catalyst drop box.

Last Updated:
March, '09

Contact the instructor at: gennari@u.washington.edu