Background. What computing skills and computer science (CS) knowledge are necessary to prepare students for informatics careers? The CS curriculum for the.
The Role of Computer Science and Computing Skills in a Medical Informatics Curriculum Susan L. Price, MD, MS, Judith R. Logan, MD, MS, and William R. Hersh, MD Division of Medical Informatics & Outcomes Research Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR Abstract Graduates of medical informatics educational programs hold a variety ofjobs that require various skills and conceptual understanding. Some degree of technical knowledge is usually expected of these workers. We examine the evolution of the computer science portion of a medical informatics curriculum and report on a survey of recent graduates providing feedback regarding the usefulness of various aspects of that curriculum.
Results Complete survey results will be reported in the poster and are summaed here. Entering students had substantial experience with productivity applications but little experience in programming and database design. Most students had limited experience with operating systems other than Windows and the Mac OS. All graduates and near-graduates reported that learning to program was important. Recurring themes in their comments were the usefulness of understanding the concepts and limitations of programming, and resulting improved ability to communicate with programmers. The two languages being taught, Perl and Java, seemed to be equally useful. A few students also mentioned C++, Visual Basic, and JavaScript as being useful in their careers. Eleven of thirteen felt that the program should include at least one full course devoted to databases. When asked to assign priorities to various topics, no clear consensus was apparent, although learning basic concepts was generally ranked more highly than specific applications and languages.
Background What computing skills and computer science (CS) knowledge are necessary to prepare students for informatics careers? The CS curriculum for the Master of Science in medical informatics at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) began as an intensive introduction to conputer science intended to provide students with degrees in other fields with enough CS understanding to pursue graduate level study in CS. It then evolved to a three-quarter sequence designed specifically for the needs and interests of medical informatics students, and has undergone a series of incremental revisions that will be described in more detail in the poster.
Discussion All of the entering students had at least some experience with email, word processing, and web searching, suggesting that time need not be allotted to teaching these skills. The strongly positive opinions about programming have reinforced our commitment to including programming in the curriculum even though some students find it difficult and frustrating to learn. The support for teaching additional database material in the program was sufficiently compelling that we have altered the curriculum to provide a full quarter devoted to relational databases and database management systems.
We administered two surveys to help guide the evolution of our curriculurm One was administered to students before the beginning of the CS sequence and another to program graduates and selected students already working in inforniatics jobs. Methods Students beginning the CS sequence in 1999 and 2000 were given surveys asking for a self assessment of experience with several programming languages, operating systems, and specific types of applications. Fourteen students completed the survey in 1999 and 11 students completed the survey in 2000.
Limitations of these surveys include the small numbers of subjects, the early career stage of the respondents, and the surveys' design as tools for curriculum improvement, not research tools.
An email survey was sent to 19 graduates and near graduates who were working in informatics jobs in July 2000. Survey questions addressed the importance for their work of programming in general, specific languages, databases, and other CS topics. Nine graduates and four students responded.
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In summary, we discuss the evolution of CS education in one program and hope to inspire sharing of ideas regarding the content and scope of CS education for medical informatics students.
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