Medical University of South Carolina

College of Health Professions

Division of Health Informatics
Master of Science in Health Informatics (MSHI) Program
HIN-700
Database Management
Syllabus
Fall 2015
Course Information
Credit Hours: 3
Semester: Fall, 2015
Prerequisites: None
Course Status: Required
Course Placement: First year
Class Meets: Online, with one weekend on-campus session
Instructor Contact Information
Instructor: Dr Robert J. Steele
Faculty Office: B407 CHP
Office Phone Number: 792-9218
Office Hours: By appointment
Fax Number: (843) 792-3327
E-Mail: steelerj@musc.edu
Course Description
This course focuses on the fundamentals of database design, data organization and
utilization. Topics include database types, data warehouses, data marts, integration and
interoperability of heterogeneous data sources, data manipulation and processing,
application programming interfaces and health care data architectures. Other topics
include data types, data standards, information classification, open EHRs, Fast
Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and analytics applications architectures.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course the student will be able to do the following:
1. Describe the fundamentals of data, data storage and databases
2. Describe the fundamentals of interoperability and integration
1

3. Discuss the techniques, issues and challenges in integrating heterogeneous

data sources in a health context
4. Discuss and describe the attributes, trade-offs and applications of databases
in broader health information system architectures
5. Discuss the latest health data and interoperability efforts in the context of
the fundamentals of data storage and data integration
6. Classify and describe the relevant data standards
7. Describe the role of data storage and integration in building health analytics
applications
8. Describe the key concepts of big data architectures and applications
9. Describe the concepts and usage of programming languages for data
manipulation and processing
10. Demonstrate the application of a programming language to carry out basic
data manipulation and processing tasks
Readings and Course Resources
Required text: None
All readings will be provided in electronic form via the courses Moodle Web site or will
be distributed in the on-campus session
Assignments and Grading Criteria:
Mid-term Examination
Programming Language Assessment
Final Examination
Attendance/ Class Participation

25%
20%
40%
15%

1. Midterm examination A midterm examination will be given on-line during

Week 7. The midterm examination will require responses to short answer and
multiple-choice questions. This examination will cover course material covered
during Weeks 1 to 6 including the written materials, the narrated PowerPoint
slide presentations, other recordings and the materials covered during the oncampus session.
2. Programming Language Assessment this will have two components. A test to
demonstrate understanding of the data manipulation programming language
concepts. A second component will demonstrate the ability to utilize the
language.

3. Final Examination In the examination, it will be necessary for students to

demonstrate factual mastery and creative synthesis / analysis of the course
material, as well as their own conclusions and judgments. It can assess materials
from all preceding weeks.
4. Online participation and attendance and participation at the on-campus session
Participation in online discussion will constitute a critical component of
assessment. A rubric will be provided to indicate how such participation will be
assessed. In addition, each students diligence in reviewing unit narrated
PowerPoint files and supplemental reading material (as noted in Moodle website
contact records available to the instructor) will be part of the graded class
participation.
Students are required to attend the on-campus session, and actively participate
in class discussions and problem-solving.
Course Schedule/ Topics
Class Schedule Fall, 2015
Date
Week 1 Week
starting Aug 26th

Week 2 Week
starting Aug 31st

Week 3 Week
starting Sept 7th

Topic/ Assignment
Introduction to Course and Fundamentals of Health Data
- Review of Syllabus and Course Expectations
- Health Data
Introduction to Fundamentals of Databases
- Structured, Unstructured, Semi-structured data
- Types of databases
- Heterogeneous data sources
- Relational databases

Introduction to Database Design

-

Database design
Structured Query Language

Week 4 Week
starting Sept 14th

Introduction to Manipulating and Processing Data

-

Data manipulation programming language concepts

MSHI Orientation
Wednesday Sept
16th , 12 noon
On-Campus Session
Thursday Sept 17th
to Sunday Sept 20th

Week 5 Week
starting Sept 21st

On-Campus Session
- Materials, examples and exercises covering introductions
to data and databases and data manipulation approaches
- Programming in greater detail

Manipulating and Processing Data

Programming language assessment, Part 1: concepts, due

Week 6 Week
starting Sept 28th

Introduction to Fundamentals of Integration and

Interoperability
-

Week 7 Week
starting Oct 5th
Week 8 Week
starting Oct 12th

Syntactic and Semantic integration

Interoperability
Data standards
Examples from health and other domains

Mid-term Exam

Enterprise Data Architectures

- Enterprise Architecture
- Types of integration
- Middleware

Week 9 Week
starting Oct 19th

Week 10 Week
starting Oct 26th

Enterprise Data Warehouses

- Integrating heterogeneous data sources
- ETL
- Data Marts
- Business intelligence or analytics tools
- OLAP, reporting, dashboards

Application Programming Interfaces

- Versus other forms of integration
- Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)
Programming language assessment, Part 2 due

Week 11 Week
starting Nov 2nd

Week 12 Week
starting Nov 9th
Week 13 Week
starting Nov 16th

Week 14 Week
starting Nov 23rd

Data Storage and Processing for Analytics Applications

- Introduction to Analytics
- Analytics and the Data Warehouse

Databases and Analytics

- Data Discovery
Introduction to Big Data Approaches
- Big data health architectures
- Processing of un-structured data
- Non-traditional data types
- Non-traditional data sources

Further Database Topics

- Database security
- Additional data manipulation and scripting languages

Week 15 Week
starting Nov 30th

Final Examination

E-value Statement
It is a requirement of the Medical University and the College of Health Professions that
each student complete an on-line evaluation of this course. An e-mail will be sent to
your MUSC e-mail account prior to the end of the course providing you with a link to the
on-line course evaluation. The evaluation is short and should only take a few minutes of
your time. We expect your participation as a mechanism to ensure that we continue to
improve the educational quality of every course and program in the College of Health
Professions. We appreciate your efforts to keep all comments constructive and
professional. Please be assured that all student input is completely confidential. There
is no mechanism to track comments or scores back to a particular student. Faculty and
program directors will only receive a summary of the scores and a summary of the typed
comments.
Honor Policy
Students are expected to abide by the MUSC Honor Code. Work submitted must be
original, reflect the students individual effort (unless working on a group project), and
be completed for the specific purpose of fulfilling the assignments for this particular
course.
http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/esl/studentprograms/honorcode/
Instructional Strategies:
Narrated power-point presentations
Audio Recordings
Readings
On-campus session (one weekend)
Guest lectures
Case-studies