Digital health is rapidly transforming health and healthcare. Information and communication technology (ICT) is an important factor in quality, safety, access, and efficiency in healthcare. This subject provides an overview of digital health and the influence of ICTs in clinical care, as well as in clinical research, population health and healthcare system planning.

Digital health current approaches and future directions are explored from the perspectives of several domains: health and biomedical sciences, information science and information technology, management sciences, and behavioural and social sciences- that is, aligned within major health informatics competency frameworks such as the Certified Health Informatician Australasia (www.healthinformaticscertification.com) and the American Medical Informatics Association (http://www.cahiim.org/hi/curriculumrequirements.html ).

In addition to providing a clinically-oriented introductory subject in the University’s Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics and Digital Health, it is also suitable for single subject enrolment by practising clinicians or postgraduate students in any clinical health profession

Healthcare is information intensive. Health data are generated, shared, consumed, and stored in a variety of partially overlapping complex networks. Healthcare lags behind many other sectors, despite efforts to use digital technologies to shape and improve health data and information processes since the middle of the 20th Century. The need for digital transformation of health is driven by socio-economic concerns (making healthcare more accessible and affordable) and patient safety (reducing medical errors, and redundant and ineffective interventions).

This subject introduces the background, current state, and future opportunities of digital health. It provides a basic understanding of health and disease and how individuals experience both. It explores the nature of biomedical data, information, and knowledge - and how digital technologies are shaping the way these are used. Digital health technologies are examined from ethical, historical, technological, and psycho-social perspectives, considering positive and negative impacts.

This subject develops technical capabilities required for sound infrastructure decision-making about digital health solutions and management, including telehealth, cloud computing, security and standards. It reviews the digital health building blocks of hardware, hosting platforms and networks. It identifies requirements for designing solutions to support clinical workflows and the need for interoperability of systems, as well as outlining technical management and governance issues.

Five major topics are covered in lectures and tutorials, as well as demonstrations and site visits where possible: (a) End user computing and the health devices layer; (b) Digital health network connectivity; (c) Health information and communication systems, platforms and hosting; (d) Functional interoperability and secure messaging in healthcare ; (e) Governance and management of health ICT infrastructure.

This subject develops familiarity with technical and administrative aspects of health information science – when, why and how health data can be generated, collected, stored, communicated and integrated to inform patient care, health research and health services management. It provides an overview of the knowledge and tools that are essential for managing and governing digital patient record data for primary and secondary uses.

Lectures and tutorials cover four major topics: (a) Structuring health data in the era of big data in healthcare; (b) Managing and governing electronic health and medical records for safety and quality of care, including: standards, terminologies and mapping approaches applicable to clinical data and clinical documentation; (c) Structural and semantic interoperability to support data use for connected care and population health, including: Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR); (d) Managing and governing secondary use of data, including health services administration and health research, including: approaches to data privacy and security, repositories, retrieval, quality assessment, and linkage.

This subject looks at the ways in which recent technological advancements can revolutionise the experience, management and future of ageing. Innovations in how we age are explored from multiple perspectives, including how technology can support autonomy and independent living as well as social connectedness to minimise the isolation common in later life.

The subject offers an introduction to the aged care information technology industry and major products and services. Controversial improvements in assistive technologies are covered, such as robotics and sensors that monitor behaviour and health conditions. Lastly, this subject considers technologies for end-of-life support, for longevity and for regenerative medicine. This subject opens up challenges and possibilities for ageing that have implications for older adults, health practitioners, caregivers, service providers, policymakers and researchers.

AIMS

This subject provides an overview of design, implementation and evaluation considerations for developers of major digital health solutions and applications, including electronic health records (EHR), telehealth, clinical decision support systems (CDSS), consumer health self-management, and innovative tools for biomedical research.

Students are presented with a selection of digital health design challenges faced by real-world health IT developers. Students work in small teams to plan and propose their response to their selected challenge.

INDICATIVE CONTENT

Key stages and major considerations in developing digital health solutions are covered as follows:

• Requirements gathering
• Interaction design
• Prototyping
• User experience evaluation
• Regulatory environment
• Ethical issues

Growing numbers of consumers are actively using various social Internet technologies for health-related purposes – to facilitate taking care of their own health, accessing health services and getting involved in health research, for example. These consumers are influencing new approaches to health professional practice and health service design. Taken together these are signs of a paradigm shift to a more participatory model of digital health, a model whose benefits and risks are not yet entirely clear.

Topics include health online social networks and social media, shareable person-generated health data from mobile apps and wearable sensors, virtual clinical services and patient avatars, crowd sourcing public health and health innovation, and other aspects of participatory health informatics. The focus is on understanding the tools, the rules and the evidence available to inform good practice. Learning and teaching methods include online interactions, on-campus lectures and guest speakers, case studies and tutorial discussions, and a project with a partner health organisation.

This subject provides knowledge and skills to support the work of information service managers, educators and researchers in many health settings. It introduces influences on good practice in health library and information services in the era of digital health. These influences include health informatics, digital health literacy, health research data management, trends in biomedical publishing, and the proliferation of information available in electronic formats, in bibliographic databases and on the Internet.

This subject offers an overview of the demand for information services in the health sciences and healthcare environment, and the diverse health information resources used by researchers, care providers, administrators, patients and members of the public. It gives guidelines for working with medical search terminology, explores the landscape of biomedical literature and provides insights into the significance of evidence-based practice.

This subject runs in partnership with Health Libraries Australia, for new and aspiring health librarians, and is recommended for Australian Library and Information Association members to specialise in this field.

This subject has four major topics and assessable activities:

1. Understanding the Australian healthcare environment, and the related information needs of health information service users. Students conduct a structured interview with a practicing health librarian, health information service manager, or consultant.

2. Navigating major health information producers and products, including availability of and access to resources, planning health information searches and summarising search results. Students prepare a report on analysing a realistic client information need and resolving it using these resources.

3. Becoming an evidence-based practice specialist in the healthcare environment, including applying EBP to continuous quality improvement in a range of healthcare contexts. Students undertake critical appraisal of two research articles relevant to a specific scenario concerning safety and quality of care.

4. Using health knowledge management technologies - e.g. for learning management, research data management, business intelligence and decision-making - including principles and practical considerations for their selection, implementation and evaluation. Students produce a desk assessment of a currently available digital health knowledge management product or service.