Course Projects
- The
first project involves the investigation of the issues associated with a specific
healthcare industry problem from the perspective of either providers, insurers, state and
federal governments, or the consumer. The report should address who are the players, what
is the problem, why is this a problem, what proposals have been made for resolution, what
is the status of the proposal, and what is the role of IT. Examples include physician
profiling, HEDIS reporting, claims administration, and disease management. Discussion
of the role of IT requires a work-centered analysis of the problem, identification of a
major vendor of software products for the problem, and identification of the gaps in
existing solutions to the problem.
This report should include
(1) description of the problem and the context (20%)
(2) analysis of the requirements of the problem (20%),
(3) work-centered analysis of the problem (20%),
(4) identification of a major software vendor and product which is a potential solution to
the problem (10%),
(5) discussion of the gaps in existing information systems approaches and solutions to the
problem (10%)
The report, composed as a Word document in 12 point and double spaced, should not exceed
20 pages. It should be justified on both sides and include page numbering, appropriate
section titles, and references.
Submissions should include a hard copy of the Word document and a copy on disk (to include on the course web pages).
Grading points:
Content: 80% (as indicated above); Style (syntax, organization, references, etc.): 20%
- The second
project should explore the role of information technology (IT) in providing an effective
decision support solution strategy for a significant health care industry problem. A decision support system (DSS) can be defined as
any computer system, composed of data management and analysis tools, designed to support
decision-making. In health care, one can
broadly think of two main types of decision support systems: clinical and administrative.
Clinical decision support systems help to improve delivery of healthcare by supporting
health professionals make more informed clinical decisions.
Administrative decision support systems help administrative professionals, such as
finance and human resource management, make decisions to improve management and
organization of healthcare resources.
The underlying conceptual architecture of a generic decision support system is depicted in the diagram below.
- The
presentation and language systems comprise the user interface component of a DSS. They
help the user access the system (for instance, a mini electronic medical record) and
interact with it. The knowledge system is a systematically organized collection of
knowledge that is accessible electronically and interpretable by the computer. A database,
data warehouse, or a medical knowledge base consisting of a vocabulary with relationships
that capture the medical literature and expert domain knowledge, are examples of knowledge
system. The problem processing system
provides a reasoning strategy or analytical approach to harness the knowledge system. For example, drug-drug interaction rules can be
applied to a database of drugs before a transaction takes place. Patient data in the form of an electronic patient
medical record makes up the final database component.
You will use the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint) to implement a healthcare-related decision support system. The project will include a written report (using Word), an in class presentation (using PowerPoint), and a prototype application (using Access and/or Excel). In order to share your work with current and future classmates, you must also prepare a simple Web page that provides access to each of these project components. Note: additional information and instruction for web enabling your project will be provided later in the semester.
In the past, successful prototypes have taken advantage of Microsoft Access/Microsoft Excel integration. For example, Microsoft Access can serve as the database, with embedded links to Microsoft Excel to provide the analytical decision support capabilities. A tutorial on Microsoft Office Suite integration is available here. It is also possible to develop the entire prototype DSS in Microsoft Access, but this may require some Visual Basic for Applications coding. In this latter case, the architectural distinctions between patient database, knowledge base, and analysis engine are blurred, as Access integrates these services.
The written report should be composed in Word using 12 point, double-spaced text and should not exceed 20 pages. It should be justified on both sides and include page numbering, appropriate section titles, and references.
Grading points:
Content: 80%:
(1) Describe the big picture and the context (20%),
(2) Describe your specific problem (10%),
(3) Analyze the decision support requirements of the problem, including the impact of HIPAA (20%),
(4) Identify the major components of the IT solution (10%),
(5) Examine the solution for sample "what-if" scenarios (15%),
(6) Conclusions and recommendations (5%)
Style (executive summary, syntax, organization, references, etc., and presentation): 20%