About us

The department of medical informatics and medical education was established at NUI Galway in October 2000.  The new department has two main functions.  The first is to develop the existing health informatics courses within the school of medicine and to promote the application of health informatics in other disciplines.  The second is to facilitate the creation of excellent learning environments for students within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.  To date we have designed a new course and novel assessments for our undergraduate and postgraduate courses.  We have initiated a health informatics research programme and have secured funding to support the training of teachers.

This website will become an interactive learning environment in due course.  In its present form it provides details of our timetables, lectures and study guides as well as useful links to other informatics and educational sites.  It has an e-mail response facility and a bulletin board.  Future developments will include the adoption of the University website template and completion of the content within each of the categories listed in our contents frame.  We would welcome suggestions about how we could improve this website.  Please use the contact details available from the “contact MIME” menu.

• Undergraduate course 2001-2002
• Course Aims
• Course objectives
• Health Informatics: Course Contents  
• Health Informatics: Assessment:  
• The Marks in Health Informatics 
• 4MB 2000-2001 – Reading List
• Attendance
• Student Support

Undergraduate course 2001-2002

  This course has been created designed to introduce you to the concepts of health informatics and bio statistics.  Our intention is to give you the tools that you will need to find answers to clinical problems when you qualify.  You will learn how information is created, interpreted, processed, stored and used in medicine.  You will also learn the basic skills of bio statistics using novel interactive teaching methods.  We will give you extensive practical exposure in the relevant aspects of health informatics and statistics.  All our lectures and course notes etc. will be available on this website.  We recommend that you print out the handouts and place them in a folder for revision.  Using the website versions of our documents will allow you to use the hyperlinks function, which will give you access to other sites of interest and alternative learning materials.

  We hope that you will enjoy this course.  We wish to invite your feedback on all aspects of this course in terms of both its content and delivery.

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Course Aims:

a)      This course will introduce students to the science of information management as applied to medicine

b)      Students will learn how to find, manage and appraise relevant information

c)      The students will have a thorough knowledge of applied biostatistics

d)      The students will develop their computer skills

e)      The students will learn about the complexity and uncertainty inherent in medicine

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Course objectives:

      By the end of this course the students will be able to demonstrate a thorough understanding of how medical information is created, interpreted, stored and used.

      The students will be able to demonstrate proficiency in the use of software applications relevant to medicine e.g. Microsoft Office applications, SPSS etc.

      The students will be able to use statistics to describe and interpret numeric information.

      The students will proficient in the use of Internet and on-line database resources to find relevant information

      The students will be able to appraise search findings in terms of its relevance and quality

      The students will understand how doctors use information to make decisions

      The students will be aware of how telematics and information science will affect how they manage information when they qualify.

      By the end of the course the students will be able to distinguish areas where knowledge is “certain” from those in which knowledge is uncertain.

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Health Informatics: Course Contents

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Health Informatics: Assessment:

a)      Term tests end of Term 2 – December 2001.  (Extended Matching MCQ on Informatics and Statistics)

b)      Evidence Based Case Report to be completed by the 31/1/2002

c)      Final MCQ and Practical OSCE exam in February 2002

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The Marks in Health Informatics are distributed as follows:

·        EB Case Report      50   Marks

·        Final MCQ            50   Marks (40 Marks final MCQ, and 10 Marks from the Term Test MCQs)

·        Computer OSCE      100 Marks

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4MB 2000-2001 – Reading List

1.         For critical reading and study design read the appropriate chapters in “How to Read a Paper” by Trisha Greenhalgh: BMJ Publishing 1997

2.         For Statistics read the appropriate chapters in “Interpretation and Uses of Medical Statistics” by Leslie E Daly, Geoffrey J Bourke and James McGilvray: Blackwell Scientific Publications 1991

3.         For Medical Informatics read “ Medical Informatics…the essentials by F T De Dombal: Butterworth Heinmann, 1996

4.         An alternative and more up to date textbook on medical informatics is available at: http://www.mieur.nl/mihandbook/r_3_3/handbook/home.htm

5.         Additional reading material may be given to you at lectures and/or posted on the website in the “Handouts Folder”

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Attendance

  We expect that students will attend at least 75% of all our practicals and lectures.  Failure to do so will mean that the student in question may not qualify to sit their 4 ^th MB examination in medical informatics.

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Student Support

if you are having difficulties with the volume of work in 3 ^rd/4 ^th med., or are experiencing problems which are affecting your ability to work, please take the opportunity to talk to a member of our staff at your earliest convenience.  We can offer a lot of help with time management, study skills, work planning.  We can also direct you to the appropriate support should you have an emotional or physical health problem.

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