Course description

Course lay-out

The fourth course provides insight into the medical process and its context. The subjects that will be discussed in this course are all related to the medical process. Some of these subjects are:

 

Educational goals

• Considerable knowledge of and insight into fundamental informatics concepts, especially in the area of logics and set theory
• Insight into and knowledge of important medical informatical, mathematical concepts and techniques
• A global overview and crucial aspects of informatics
• Basic skills in the area of imperative and object oriented programming

 

Involved departments

• Clinical Informatics
• Informatics
• Mathematics

 

Evaluation

Evaluation of the course and assignments

This course ran parallel with the first course and the second course. The drop-out of students in their first year of the study is about 20 percent. This course was largely accountable for the drop-out of students. It was without doubt the most difficult course of the first semester.

 

The first part of the third course consisted of 'overview of informatics, logics 1 and programming 1'. Overview of informatics consisted of the history and the birth of the present informatics. Logics tried to give us some insight in necessary logics for information systems. Programming speaks for itself.

 

The lecturer of logics did not make it easy to master the basics of logics. The lecturer himself was very confused; learning logics by yourself was easier than when it was lectured by this man. Some essential parts were not explained properly, the result of this was that logics was even more difficult. A part of the students drop-out because of logics. Personally I had almost no impediment with logics.

 

Logics was not the only drop-out reason; programming was also one of the reasons. The programming theory was given at Thursday afternoon as an introduction to the practical the next morning. Seven practical assignments had to be handed in (this was one assignment to many). Furthermore the speed of the cause was very high and the topics were discussed very fast. I found programming very difficult, but I never thought of quiting the study. Nowadays I have not much trouble with programming.

 

The second semester consisted of 'logics 2, programming 2 and mathematics'. Logics and programming were continued in the second semester, while mathematics was a new part of the course. The lecturer was capable of transfering the knowledge about mathematics. Mathematics received less attention, because of the programming assignments that had to be handed in. To summarize; this was a difficult course.