M.S. in Health Informatics

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Coming Spring 2010- MS in Health Informatics Online!!!
Beginning in the Spring 2010 semester, the Master degree program in Health Informatics will also be offered online! Students in the MSHI program will now have the option of completing their degree on-campus, online, or through a combination of the two in a hybrid format. Northeastern will continue to enhance our programs by offering our students the most flexible and high-quality learning experience in the country.

All program applicants will undergo the same admission process, regardless of how they wish to conduct their coursework.  For more information on applying to the Masters in Health Informatics program, please click here.  

Additionally, please feel free to visit the NUOnline FAQ page at www.northeastern.edu/online/about-us-faqs.asp for more information on taking online courses.

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.

Improving our healthcare system increasingly requires the integration of innovative technology into the day to day care of individual patients. Leaders in this effort will need to have knowledge across the disciplines of health sciences and information technology. The Master Of Science in Health Informatics brings together the expertise of Northeastern’s Bouve College of Health Sciences and the College of Computer and Information Science in an interdisciplinary program to educate these future leaders. Our students come together from backgrounds in healthcare or technology to exchange ideas and learn from faculty and each other. Our faculty are all senior leaders in the field who bring both academic rigor and real world learning into the classroom.

We are committed to educating students to use healthcare technology to make a real difference in the lives of patients.

The Program

Our incoming classes have averaged 35 students a year with backgrounds in healthcare or technology. Our students include nurses, pharmacists, physicians, programmers, project managers, and analysts amongst others. We offer classes on campus in the evenings to accommodate both full time students and working professionals.

A Co-op program is available for full time students.

Our part time students come from a wide array of teaching and community hospitals, health plans, not for profit organizations and private industry. Part time students average two classes a semester.

We currently have over fifteen faculty from both within and outside the university.

We offer courses in the healthcare system, data management and database design, organizational change, clinical decision making, business issues, health systems lab and emerging technologies amongst others. Our classes are discussion oriented with active dialogue between faculty and students.

Faculty

Daniel Feinberg, MBA
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

Tom Congoran
Interim Chief Financial Officer, Atrius Health

Norm Costin
Vice President of Information and Knowledge Management, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Leonard D’Avolio, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Medical Informatics Fellow, VA Boston Healthcare System

Roger Edwards, Sc.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Pharmacy, Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Steven Flammini
Chief Technical Officer, Partners HealthCare System

Tonya Hongsermeier, MD
Principal Informatician, Clinical Informatics Research and Development, Partners HealthCare System

Arvind Kumar
Senior Vice President and Managing Partner, ACS Healthcare Solutions

Saverio Maviglia, MD, MS
Senior Informaticist, Partners Healthcare System and Associate Physician, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Barbara Moore, MD
Medical Informatician and Pediatric Hospitalist, Franciscan Hospital for Children, Brighton, MA

James Noga
Chief Information Officer, Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization

Daniel Ollendorf
Chief Review Officer, Institute for Clinical and Economic Review

Roberto Rocha, MD, PhD
Senior Corporate Manager, Clinical Knowledge Management and Decision Support, Partners HealthCare System

Todd C. Rothenhaus, MD, FACEP
Chief Information Officer, Caritas Christi Health Care

Cynthia D. Spurr
Corporate Director, Clinical Systems Management, Partners Healthcare System

Joseph Ternullo, JD
Associate Director, The Center For Connected Health, Partners Healthcare System

Admissions Criteria

Applicants must submit :

  • Complete application form.
  • A written statement of purpose, career goals.
  • A recent resume with a list of position responsibilities.
  • Three letters of recommendation.
  • Official transcripts from all colleges/universities attended.
  • International students must also submit official scores of the TOEFL examination.

**Please note that the GRE is not required to apply to the Masters in Health Informatics program.

Admission to the program requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in a technical or health-science field. Students with related 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.

Curriculum

• Prerequisite Courses*
Introduction to Computing I
Introduction to Health and Illness

* Prerequisite Courses can be taken prior to or upon admission to the program. They may be waived for students with equivalent professional experience.

In addition to any prerequisite courses, all candidates must complete 36 graduate semester hours and a 3 semester hour capstone project. Students without significant healthcare experience will be required to also complete a 1 hour precepted internship. The curriculum may be completed on a part-time or full-time basis. A grade-point average of B or higher is required for graduation.

• Required Courses (10)
HINF5101 Introduction to Health Information Systems 3SH
HINF5105 The American Healthcare System 3SH
HINF6230  Strategic Topics in Healthcare Programming 3SH
HINF6210 Organizational Behavior, Workflow Design and Change Management 3SH
HINF6225 Health Information Systems Lab 3SH
HINF6215 Project Management 3SH
HINF6220 Database Design, Access, Modeling & Security 3SH
HINF6205 Creation and Application of Medical Knowledge 3SH
HINF6202 The Business of Healthcare Informatics 3SH
Biostatistics and Public Health Informatics 3SH
Total Semester Hours 30SH
• Electives (2)
HINF6220 Data Management in Healthcare 3SH
HINF6345 Design for Usability 3SH
HINF6330 Emerging Technologies in Healthcare 3SH
HINF6350 Introduction to Genomics and Bioinformatics 3SH
HINF6355 Key Standards in Health Informatics 3SH
HINF6325 Legal and Social Issues in Health Informatics 3SH
HINF6335 Management Issues in Healthcare IT 3SH
Total Semester Hours 6SH
• Project (1)
HINF7701 Health Informatics Capstone Project 3SH
• Internship (1)
HINF7370 Internship for students without healthcare related experience 1SH

Course Descriptions

HINH5101 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.

HINF5105 The American Health Care System
Reviews the organization, financing and performance of the American heathcare system through readings and case studies. The course will explore how the economic and political structure of healthcare systems help determine quality and efficiency outcomes. The course will cover the role healthcare technology plays in our current system and the factors that determine the rate of technology adoption.

Introduction to Computing II
The course will provide knowledge of and experience with programming languages, data representation, and algorithms through exercises and case studies. Students will examine the technical architectures of various healthcare systems and how they determine functionality. The course will explore The underlying technogies systems and devices communicate use to communicate and deliver information. Knowledge and experience with core technologies will be achieved through practical exercises, projects and case studies.

HINF6210 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.

HINF6225 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.

HINF5102 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.

HINF6220 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.

HINF7701 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.

HINF7370 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.

HINF6230 Strategic Topics in Programming for Healthcare Professionals
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the theory and application of object-oriented programming. Toward this end, this course will provide instruction on the process of programming as well as the fundamental principles and components of object-oriented programming. Topics related to the process of programming include establishing an environment, naming conventions, and trouble-shooting. Coverage of principles of programming will include variables, operators, and flow control. Object-oriented principles of inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism will be implemented using Java. The course is designed to be hands on and its exercises incremental, culminating in a final project designed to reinforce the lessons learned.

HINF6202 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.

HINF6205 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.

Biostatistics and Public Health Informatics
Students will learn fundamental concepts of biostatistics and how they are used to analyze healthcare data. The principles and practice of public health surveillance as well as the application of informatics standards and methods in the development and design of surveillance systems will be discussed. The core components of analysis and interpretation of population data will be reviewed.

HINF6345 Design for Usability in Healthcare
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.

HINF6330 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.

HINF6355 Key Standards in Health Informatics
Covers terminology and standards in healthcare including: SNOMED, NMDS, UMLS, UNL, ICD, HL-7, CDA, CCR.

HINF6325 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.

HINF6335 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.

HINF6350 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.

HINF6340 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.

HINF6215 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.

Prerequisite Courses

Introduction to Computing I
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.

HINF0200 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
Bryan Lackaye, Assistant Director, Graduate Student Services at lackaye@ccs.neu.edu or (617) 373-2464.

Financial Aid Information

Dean’s Scholarship

Tuition scholarship subject to the following guidelines:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • All completed applications will be reviewed for scholarship eligibility; no additional application is required.
  • Provisional, special and other students are not eligible for scholarships.

Tuition 2009 - 2010

  • $1065 per semester hour

Request More Information

To request more information about this program, please contact Graduate Student Services at mshi@lists.ccs.neu.edu or (617) 373-2464.