• Describe the role, challenges, and opportunities of digital technologies in healthcare management.
• Identify and present the requirements for designing, implementing, and using digital technologies in healthcare.
• Analyze and discuss specific healthcare IT-related cases based on the theories presented in the course, and provide recommendation for practice
• Reflect on how the healthcare industry can leverage on digital technologies to address current healthcare objectives and requirements.

Today, in the context of technology intensive business environments and service-oriented infrastructures, digital innovation has become a key source of sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Yet, the health care sector has remained a domain with a relatively low degree of digitization, which in turn presents a great unrealized potential to harness information technology to help achieving the health care delivery goals that have become a priority for health care providers and governments across the globe: lower costs, higher quality, and increased patient access to health care services.

This course lays the foundations for discussing the potentials and challenges of implementing information technology in the healthcare field. Towards this aim, the course is divided into three sections:

In the first section, we lay methodological foundations for the design, development, management, and use of digital technologies in general. This includes a review of classic systems development methodologies up to more recent approaches and the notion of design thinking. Hence, this part primarily aims to provide the participants with necessary tools to analyze requirements, design mockup solutions, and guide technical implementation projects – without having to be technical experts themselves.

The second section focuses on the application of information technology to the health care sector. We introduce essential types of information systems such as electronic health records, personal health records, health information exchanges, and health information infrastructures. We will also discuss how such information systems can be designed, implemented, and used in a health care context. This section also addresses the potential and challenges of implementing information technology in the health care industry relative to managerial, strategic, organizational, and privacy issues.

In the third section, we tackle the issue of how digital technologies can provide the basis for innovation. Here the focus is on digital innovation at the consumer-end such as mobile and digital health platforms. We will discuss implications for digital business models and marketing in the online space. Finally, this section also includes a discussion of the pertinent privacy and security regulations for digital health solutions.

The course concludes with a summary and wrap-up, in which the students pitch the case they investigate for their synopsis paper.

Textbook:

Hoyt, R. E., & Yoshihashi, A. K. (2014). Health Informatics: Practical guide for healthcare and information technology professionals6^th ed. Informatics Education.com. (Ebook ISBN 978-0-9887529-2-4)