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Degree Programs > M.S. in Health Informatics
Northeastern University is offering a professional interdisciplinary Master of Science degree in Health Informatics (MS in HI) to respond to a critical shortage in health informatics professionals in New England and in the nation. This degree program draws on the technical expertise from the College of Computer and Information Science, as well as from the knowledge and practices of health professionals from the Bouve College of Health Sciences.
The Interdisciplinary Master of Science Degree in Health Informatics is a non-thesis master's degree program. The program aims, through scholarship and practice, to educate information technology (IT) professionals in understanding the unique characteristics of the healthcare system and healthcare professionals in understanding information technology. It teaches students the ability to use HI related technology and to facilitate better communication between health providers and IT professionals to improve the outcome and the delivery of healthcare. Students are provided with an understanding of the health care system plus a conceptual understanding of the science and the methodology for health informatics.
• Program Description
• Teaching Faculty
• Admissions Criteria
• Degree Requirements
• Specimen Curricula
• Course Descriptions
• Application Process
• Financial Aid Information
• Request More Information
Program Description
Health Informatics (HI) uses information technology along with information management concepts and methods in the delivery of healthcare. An effective HI professional needs to understand the relationship between information technology, people, health, and the healthcare ecosystem. They must be able to effectively communicate with practitioners, administrators, and IT professionals and understand the needs and constraints of all sides. The educational objective of the program is to educate students about the unique characteristics of the healthcare system, its terminology and standards, its needs, fundamentals of information technology, how information technology is used in healthcare, and to teach students how to use HI related technology to improve health care systems and outcomes.
The Master of Science degree program in Health Informatics is designed to:
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To provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the role of information in the health care setting.
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To provide students with a sound basis for developing, implementing, maintaining, and managing information resources and systems in healthcare organizations.
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To provide students skills in the management of biomedical information, technology, and decision-making.
Graduates of the program are expected to have the skills to take a leadership role in the needs analysis, system design and analysis, product specification and product management, software QA, systems setup and implementation, training, maintenance, and customer support of healthcare information systems. Likely employers are health systems, hospitals, physician groups and outpatient facilities, health related software companies, HMOs, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, CROs and government.
The program may be pursued on a full or part time basis. Classes are held in the evenings to accommodate working professionals. The curriculum requires a mix of core and elective courses, culminating in a capstone project and a 1-credit precepted internship for students without experience in a health care setting. The internship may be waived for students with demonstrated practical experience.
Teaching Faculty
Stanley Hochberg, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor and Program Director
Gil Alterovitz, Ph.D., National Institute Of Health, NLM Biomedical Informatics Fellow, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Scott Bradley, Product Manger, PHT Corporation
Norm Costin, Vice President of Information and Knowledge Management, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Leonard D’Avolio, Ph.D., National Library of Medicine Medical Informatics Fellow
Steven Flammini, Chief Technical Officer, Partners HealthCare System
Tonya Hongsermeier, MD, Corporate Manager, Clinical Knowledge Management and Decision Support, Partners HealthCare System
Vipul Kashyap, Ph.D., Senior Medical Informatician, Partners HealthCare System
James Noga, Chief Information Officer, Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization
Todd C. Rothenhaus, MD, FACEP, Chief Medical Information Officer, Caritas Christi Health Care
Cynthia D. Spurr, Corporate Director, Clinical Systems Management, Partners Healthcare System
Admissions Criteria
Applicants must submit :
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Complete application form.
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A written statement of purpose, career goals.
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A recent resume with a list of position responsibilities.
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Three letters of recommendation.
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Official transcripts from all colleges/universities attended.
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Official scores of GRE General Test. (The GRE requirement may be waived, at the discretion of the program director, for applicants who have already demonstrated outstanding academic and professional achievement.)
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International students must also submit official scores of the TOEFL examination.
Admission to the program requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in computer science, information science, or information systems; or a health or life science or profession (nursing, pharmacy, biology, etc.) and knowledge of basic information technology concepts. Students with extensive IT experience and other bachelor’s degrees will also be considered. Acceptance to the program requires an undergraduate GPA of 3.0 (B) or higher, and is granted upon the recommendation of the program’s Graduate Committee after a review of the completed application.
Three background courses are required:
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Introduction to Computing
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Fundamentals of Statistics
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Health & Medicine for Non-Clinicians
The three background courses needed to enter the program will be offered in the fall semester for those students who lack the necessary background. Students may place out of these courses through prior coursework or practical experience.
Degree Requirements
All candidates must complete the core of 24 semester hours and 12 hours of electives plus a 1 credit precepted internship and a 3 semester hour capstone project. A GPS of 3.0 or better is required for matriculation.
| • Health Informatics and Management Core Courses (4): | ||
| Introduction to Health Informatics Systems | 3SH | |
| Organizational Behavior, Workflow Design & Change Management | 3SH | |
| Health Information Systems Lab | 3SH | |
| Project Management | 3SH | |
| • IT Core Courses (2): | ||
| Data Management in Healthcare | 3SH | |
| Database Design, Access, Modeling & Security | 3SH | |
| • Health Core Courses (2): | ||
| Business of Healthcare Informatics | 3SH | |
| Creation and Application of Medical Knowledge | 3SH | |
| • Elective Courses (Select 4 from below): | ||
| Design for Usability | 3SH | |
| Emerging Technologies in Healthcare | 3SH | |
| Introduction to Genomics and Bioinformatics | 3SH | |
| Key Standards in Health Informatics | 3SH | |
| Legal & Social Issues in Health Informatics | 3SH | |
| Management Issues in Healthcare IT | 3SH | |
| Public Health Surveillance and Informatics | 3SH | |
| • Health Informatics Capstone Project | 3SH | |
| • Health Informatics Precepted Internship 1 | 1SH | |
Table 1 provides the structure of the Curriculum.
| Background Courses | ||
| Introduction to Computing | Fundamentals of Statistics | Health & Illness for Non-Clinicians |
| Required Courses | ||
| Data Management in Healthcare | Intro. to Health Informatics & Health Information Systems | The Business of Healthcare Informatics |
| Database Design, Access, Modeling & Security | Org. Behavior, Workflow, Design, & Change Mgmt. | Creation and Application of Medical Knowledge |
| Health Information Systems Lab | Project Management | |
| Electives (Choose 2) | ||
| Design for Usability | Key Standards in Health Informatics | Management Issues in Health Informatics |
| Legal & Social Issues in Health Informatics | Emerging Technologies in Healthcare | Intro. to Genomics & Bioinformatics |
| Required Project Courses | ||
| Health Informatics Precepted Internship | ||
| Capstone Project | ||
Specimen Curricula
Table 2 provides a specimen curriculum for full time student.
| Fall Semester Year 1 (12H) | Winter Semester Year 1 (9H) |
| Introduction to Health Informatics Systems | Health Information Systems Lab |
| Org Behavior, Wkflow, Design & Change Mgmt | Database Design, Access, Modeling and Security |
| Data Management in Healthcare | reation and Application of Medical Knowledge |
| The Business of Healthcare Informatics | |
| Summer Semester Year 1 (10H) | Fall Semester Year 2 (9H) |
| Project Management | Health Informatics Capstone Project |
| Elective 1 | Elective 3 |
| Elective 2 | Elective 4 |
| Health Informatics Precepted Internship |
Course Descriptions
Introduction to Health Informatics and Health Information Systems
Introduces the history and current status of information systems in health care: information architectures, administrative and clinical applications, evidence-based medicine, information retrieval, decision support systems, security and confidentiality, bioinformatics, information system cycles, the electronic health record, key health information systems and standards, and medical devices.
Organizational Behavior, Workflow Design and Change Management
Reviews the concepts, issues and practices of organizational behavior at the individual, group and organizational levels. Students will learn to gather information from users, and understand the users’ point of view and problems. This course will examine processes and work flow in healthcare environments, understand organizational structures, and analyze business processes and how they are translated into specifications to build a RFP for vendors. Fundamentals of organizational behavior and change management will also be examined.
Health Information Systems Lab
Provides an in-depth view of commercial and proprietary information systems in healthcare. Students with heterogeneous backgrounds will be grouped. Each group will have to prepare an RFP to procure a key healthcare IT system (CPOE, EMR, EDIS, Radiology, PACs). Each group will create scenarios that systems’ vendors from industry will present in to the class. Students will then compare the systems and make a choice based on the demonstrations.
Data Management in Healthcare
Explores issues of data representation in healthcare systems, including patient and provider identification, audit trails, authentication, and reconciliation. Discusses underlying design of repositories for Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) systems. Includes an overview of privacy issues, legislation, regulations and accreditation standards unique to healthcare.
Database Design, Access, Modeling & Security
Explores database design, data modeling, and implementation from the manager’s and the developer’s perspective. Design theories will focus on relational database and object-oriented models. Students will create and query relational databases using SQL and Oracle, and build web interfaces for access by healthcare professionals. Performance topics include integrity, security, recovery, and optimization.
Health Informatics Capstone Project
Interdisciplinary student teams (IT person, healthcare person) work together on a limited scope project defined by a potential employer in the healthcare industry. Course requirements include working with both healthcare professionals, IT professionals and the instructor to define and conduct the project. Involves frequent interaction with other students and the instructor via electronic conferencing. Students will write an in-depth research paper that summarizes and reflects upon their work.
Health Informatics Precepted Internship
Provides students with a real-world practical experience in applied healthcare informatics. With faculty oversight and guidance, students are matched with a preceptor working in a healthcare system (hospital, physician practice group, pharmaceutical/biotech company, software company, clinical research organization), work 8-10 hours per week for one semester.
Business of Healthcare Informatics
Focuses on the business practices relating to health information technology. This includes departmental design and management, capital and operating budgets, the budget planning process, and infrastructure design and strategic planning. Other topics include evaluation of vendors, vendor selection, clinical administration systems, and the design and management of integrated delivery networks.
Creation and Application of Medical Knowledge
Explore the relationship between knowledge and data. Topics include: how knowledge is created and used to improve clinical care, experimental research studies, storing, indexing and retrieving medical knowledge, and use of clinical decision support in different forms.
Design for Usability
This course expands the analysis and design repertoire of the students by providing up-to-date methods that are evolving to deal with the complexity of design in the IT world, focusing on the human-computer interface in healthcare. Design methodologies covered in this course will focus on design approaches such as user-centered-design, participatory design, contextual design and ethnography. Students will understand the role, function and use of various design approaches and when to use each approach.
Emerging Technologies in Healthcare
Examines trends and drivers of innovation in general and in healthcare, and how emerging technologies are adapted and evaluated. This course will introduce students to emerging technologies such as electronic health records, computerized provider order entry systems, regional health information organizations, personal health records, telemedicine, new imaging systems, robotic surgery, pharmacogenomics, and national level bio-surveillance.
Key Standards in Health Informatics
Covers terminology and standards in healthcare including: SNOMED, NMDS, UMLS, UNL, ICD, HL-7, CDA, CCR.
Legal & Social Issues in Health Informatics
Introduction to the ethical, legal and social issues arising in the use of computerized technology and information systems in the delivery of health care. Case studies will be used to: discuss the role of law in the design and implementation of health informatics systems; the U.S. healthcare regulatory environment; and the structure, concepts, and process of decision making on health matters in legislative, administrative and judicial bodies. Ethical issues in healthcare informatics
Management Issues in Healthcare IT
Uses case studies to identify typical CIO issues in a healthcare organizations including: human resource management, strategic planning, project management, vendor contract negotiations, budgeting, service levels, etc.
Public Health Surveillance and Informatics
Students will learn the how public health information is generated, collected, transferred and shared. The principles and practice of public health surveillance, the analysis and interpretation of data and applying informatics standards and methods in the development and design of surveillance systems will also be discussed.
Introduction to Genomics and Bioinformatics
Introduction to the study of genes and their function, and to the principles, concepts, methods and tools used to process data from biological experiments, focusing particularly on biological sequence data. Includes topics such as: DNA and protein sequence alignment and analysis, sequence analysis software, and database searching.
Project Management
Introduce students to managing healthcare informatics projects including the tools and techniques used to manage small, medium, and large software and systems projects. Topics include project planning, project management tools, estimating, budgeting, human resource management, etc. All phases of a project are discussed and students are required to plan a project.
Background Courses
Introduction to Computing
This introductory course focuses on the components (e.g. hardware, software, networks) of computer and information systems as well as concepts and principles pertaining to information and knowledge development, management, dissemination and application using computers. Fundamental concepts of programming languages, data representation, and algorithms will be reviewed. An overview of contemporary information technologies such as relational
databases, web-based front-end data delivery, report generation, decision support systems, imaging systems, and biomedical monitoring devices will also be provided. The course will include illustrations and demonstrations of how computers and information systems are used in health care.
Fundamentals of Statistics
Offers an online course, presented in the form of modules designed to be completed weekly. In addition to the modules, a midterm examination and a final examination take place. Each module and exam simulates a weekly class meeting. Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to describe the concept of measurement as it relates to statistics, data analysis, and health science research; discuss the principles of probability, hypothesis testing, and statistical decision making; select the appropriate, basic statistical test for analysis of data to answer research questions and test research hypotheses; utilize the SPSS program to conduct data analyses for a variety of descriptive, parametric, and nonparametric statistics; and interpret the results of data analyses in relation to research questions and research hypotheses.
Health & Illness for Non-Clinicians
This course examines the social organization of healthcare in the United States, including discussion of the settings in which health care is provided, and the role of public and private organizations in funding and regulating health care. The course also provides an overview of how the biological aspects of the body integrate with the psychological and social aspects of the mind to influence both health behavior and health care delivery. Students will gain an understanding of how individuals, healthy and ill, access the health care system and move within the system to secure the appropriate level of care. Basic health care terminology will be introduced.
Application Process
Online Application
For more information or questions on application process, please contact
Dr. Stanley Hochberg, Program Director at s.hochberg@neu.edu or (617) 373 5005.
Financial Aid Information
Dean’s Scholarship
Tuition scholarship subject to the following guidelines:
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Full-time students in graduate degree and certificate programs are eligible for a graduate tuition scholarship of up to 1/3 of their tuition to a maximum dollar amount not to exceed the tuition charged for 4 semester hour in each term of full-time registration.
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Part-time students in graduate degree and certificate programs are eligible for a graduate tuition scholarship of up to 1/4 of their tuition to a maximum dollar amount not to exceed the tuition charged for 2 semester hour in each term of part-time registration.
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Provisional, special and other students are not eligible for scholarships.
Tuition 2008 - 2009
- $1035 per semester hour
To request more information about this program, please contact Dr. Stanley Hochberg, Program Director at s.hochberg@neu.edu or (617) 373 5005.