Course description

Course Contents

We will focus on understanding the nature of healthcare work and the role of healthcare IT and the strategic importance of IT. We will discuss the very nature of information strategy and focus on the alignment between information strategy and organisational strategy and how goals of the information strategy should be drafted and what it should contain.

 

We will discuss the usage of the enterprise architecture as a strategy. As such we need a foundation for execution describing the infrastructure and digitised business processes automating core capabilities. We will discuss different parts of the foundation for execution i.e. the operating model, enterprise architecture and the IT engagement model, model as a system of governance mechanisms ensuring business and IT projects achieve both local and hospital-wide objectives. Case studies will be used to demonstrate the importance of acrchitectural thinking, information management and IT-governance. Students will be asked to rewrite a selected case studies using insights from literature on enterprise architecture and IT-governance and prepare a draft on a IT plan.

 

Besides information management and architectural thinking, we will focus on security aspects in healthcare. Confidentiality of medical data is an important issue in the design and implementation of healthcare information systems. IT security starts with understandings business needs, developing a strategy and applying current best practice to meet those needs. We will look at information systems and the way they are secured, relevant legislation with respect to privacy of patient data. Futhermore we discuss different encryption techniques including a public key infrastructure (PKI) and the sue of certificates and smartcards.

Healtcare work and the role of healthcare IT

• Strategic importance of healthcare IT
• Nature of information strategy
• Alignment between information strategy and organisational strategy
• Development of a healthcare IT strategy
• Strategic IT-plan

Architectures as a strategy

• Foundation for execution
• Operating models
• Enterprise architectures
• IT engagement model
• Architectural maturity
• Organisational learning

Governance

• IT governance
• Key IT decisions
• IT governance archetypes
• Mechanisms for implementing IT governance
• Assessment of IT governance

Security

• Security standards and legislation
• Privacy legislation
• ISO-norm NEN7510
• Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
• Encryption techniques
• Certification Authority (CA)
• PKI-Smartcard

 

Course lay-out

Lectures and work groups 20%, home study 80%. The course will have a weekly focus with lectures, work groups, presentations, practical work and case discussions relating to the content for the week. Specific cases and exercises will be presented by the lecturer(s) during the course and posted on Blackboard. Student will be expected to apply concepts learned to particular situations presented in the cases. Both lectures and group work will be interactive. Presentations will be discussed afterwards and should primarily occur by and among members of the class although the lecturer(s) will be adding questions, comments and suggestions.

 

Educational goals

The aim of the course is to provide students with profound knowledge of health information management, enterprise architectures and IT-governance and to provide a comprehensive and practical introduction to security aspects in healthcare.

 

Involved departments

• Clinical Informatics

 

Evaluation

Evaluation of the course and assignments

It was a very interesting course. The assignment was good to master the study materials and by applying the theory you already learned the materials for the exam. The assignment could replace the exam; the exam has no additional value. The guest lecturers had informative and interesting lectures. The assignment was case-based; that makes it particularly interesting, the persons in the case were real persons, the healthcare organization or institution are real organizations. I improved my communication skills (during the oral presentation), writing skills (writing the report for the assignment) and coorperation skills (working together with other students). This course is a good closure of the first year of the Master.