Course description

Course Contents

Medically orientated scientific research can be broadly divided into two main areas, i) gaining understanding of (molecular) processes related to initiation and progression of disease in man and ii) development and evaluation of diagnostic methods and (curative) therapeutic approaches for human disease.

 

Course lay-out

Research line: Public Health and Epidemiology

Title of the project: ACOVE

Brief work plan of the student: The objective of this internship is to perform a literature search in Google, MEDLINE and specialized web sources (like RAND etc.) in order to obtain a better understanding of the ACOVE initiative. ACOVE has been recently suggested as an instrument for auditing the healthcare process of vulnerable elderly. Ultimately this literature search will result in a report in which the student will describe the state of affairs pertaining to ACOVE, including its inception and the research efforts relevant to it described by a set of features to categorize it. The relationship with IT and IT possibilities will also be addressed.

 

Educational goals

During the short internships the master student will gain insight in different aspects of the research process. He/she will be guided along four different phases of the sicentific research process, i) creating a valid scientific hypothesis, ii) writing a research proposal, iii) performing experiments and gaining results, iv) writing a paper.

 

Since the master student is confronted with a relatively new subject (s)he will also gain experience in interviewing other professionals about their research and in obtaining knowledge about the subject by a survey of relevant documents. The mastery of these activities is very important for medical informatics professionals.

 

Internship II: Take part in a biomedical research project in an academic setting or participate in a research project concerning the organisation of care processes.

 

Involved departments

• Clinical Informatics
• Public Health and Epidemiology

 

Evaluation

Evaluation of the course and assignments

I was interested in doing research in the area of public health and epidemiology. The focus of my research was doing a literature search and write a report about the current state of affairs of ACOVE. I finished my internship with a report which people can read if they would like to know more about ACOVE. The report can be used as a start point in order to find out more about assessing tools in vulnerable elder population. I improved my skills, like writing a report and interviewing. It was difficult to keep it 'short' and still fit everything in the report. Furthermore the target group was very broad, therefore the language could not be too technical or too difficult. Everything considered I am pleased with the result. Again it is necessary to thoroughly plan every action you take. The internship had a duration of one month, so you had to plan some things in advance in order to avoid any time related problems. Furthermore planning is required because of the fact that professionals do not always have the time for you, you have to plan the appointments and otherwise you will have to think about alternatives. One suggestion I would like to do is that the two internships are merged into one internship; you could do a lot more in two months than in one month for each internship, the goals of the two internships are sufficient.