Standardisation within Health Informatics, 5 credits

Bachelor of science or professional qualification of at least 180 credits within health care, biomedicine, technology, data and software engineering or informatics. Furthermore, knowledge in English equivalent to English B (with at least the Pass grade) is required.

The general aims of the course are to enable students to acquire knowledge and skills to choose, analyse and apply different health informatics standards to store, retrieve, represent and exchange data between different health information systems.

On completion of the course, the students should be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

• account for the importance of health informatics standards and terminologies for management of patient information,
• account for different ways to use controlled terminology for care documentation,
• account for different ways to use health informatics standards to achieve interoperability between health information systems, and
• explain methods to represent medical knowledge in form of standardised models.

Skills and ability

• analyse and apply different standards to represent and exchange information between different health information systems,
• chose and apply techniques to model clinical knowledge, and
• evaluate possible fields for standardisation and possible choices of standards.

Assessment ability and attitudes

• assess the possible impact of health informatics standardisation on the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of care, and
• reflect on the use of health informatics standards in different countries.

• National and international standardisation organisations and initiatives
• Different levels of interoperability
• Overview over health informatics standards, coding systems, terminologies and ontologies, e.g. HL7 series of standards, OpenEHR, SNOMED CT, Continua
• Models for clinical knowledge representation

Lectures, seminars and computer laboratory sessions.

Examination is based on group assignments as well as on an individual assignment. Group assignments will be graded pass/fail and the individual assignment  will be graded with A-F. Final grading is done when all mandatory parts of the examination are performed.

Compulsory participation
Group assignments during computer laboratory sessions are compulsory. The course director assesses if and, in that case, how absence can be compensated. Before the student has participated in all compulsory parts or compensated absence in accordance with the course director's instructions, the student's results for the course will not be registered in LADOK.

Limitation of number of occasions to write the exam
The student has the right to be examined six times. If the student has not passed the course after four examinations he/she is encouraged to visit the study advisor.

Examination will be provided during a time of two years after a possible cancellation of the course. Examination can take place according to an earlier literature list during a time of one year after the date when a major renewal of the literature list has been made.

Course evaluation will be carried out in accordance with the guidelines established by the Board of Higher Education. The course language is English.