5 credits
By addressing current trends and future applications in public health research, students develop advanced competency in health informatics and surveillance in this course. The key informatics issues of data standards and integration, vocabularies and data transmission protocols, natural language or text processing, health information technology, surveillance systems, and the application of geographical information systems to situation awareness are addressed. Through surveillance data analysis, students will use trend data to detect and interpret aberrations in person, place, and time trends. Other topics include information architecture, public health records, electronic medical records, electronic health records, health information exchange, and database design, as well as information storage, security, and privacy.