Graduate
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
- Faculty
- Admissions Criteria
- Curriculum
- Course Descriptions
- Application Process
- Financial Aid Information
- Request More Information
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
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
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.
- Official scores of GRE General Test. (The GRE requirement may be waived, for applicants who have already demonstrated outstanding academic and professional achievement.)
- Personal Goal Statement
- 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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- For information about financial aid contact:
Student Financial Services
139 Richards Hall
617 373 5899
sfs@neu.edu and http://www.financialaid.neu.edu/
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 2008 - 2009
- $1035 per semester hour
To request more information about this program, please contact Bryan Lackaye, Assistant Director, Graduate Student Services at lackaye@ccs.neu.edu or (617) 373-2464.