About our courses
Our coursework focuses on establishing fundamental and contextual knowledge of the healthcare sector as well as building technical and research skills to make meaningful contributions to the quality of patient care. We aim to equip our students with technical skills, business skills, and knowledge of healthcare systems that will prepare them to enter the workforce at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
CHIP specific courses are listed below. In addition, CHIP students have the opportunity to take courses across other disciplines and departments including School of Information and Library Science courses (INLS), Public Health (PUBH), Graduate School leadership courses (GRAD), Nursing (NURS), and more.
CHIP Core Courses
CHIP 720- 311/ 320
Systems Analysis
Introduction to the systems approach of the design and development of heath information systems, and understanding systems analysis in healthcare. Methods and techniques for the analysis and modelling of system functionality (e.g., structured analysis) and data represented in the system (e.g., object-oriented analysis) are studied. (3 Credits, In-Person or Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 690-335
Introduction to Programming
Introduction to programming and computational concepts. Students will learn to write programs using constructs such as iteration, flow control, variables, functions, and error handling. No programming experience required. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 725
Electronic Health Records
Focuses on EHR data standards with emphasis on data management requirements, applications, and services. Course includes HL7, CCHIT, and CDISC standards. For data management specialists, administrators, and health data analysts. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 721
Healthcare Systems in the US
This core course is designed to provide students with an overview of the structure, systems, and policies of health care delivery in the United States. The goal is to increase students’ knowledge and abilities to analyze and address health care issues from both management and policy perspectives. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 732
Database Systems in Healthcare
Students will learn the basics of setup, administration, and querying relational databases using SQL to perform CRUD operations: Create Read Update Delete. This course also covers basic information about indexing and normalization to improve performance, efficiency, and stability. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 793
Health Informatics Internship
300 hours required. Internship Overview (3 Credits, Remote, Hybrid or In-Person)
CHIP Electives
CHIP 400
Digital Health Innovations
This class enables and inspires students to use their skills to innovate within the digital health ecosystem. Class time will be spent on lecture and discussion to deepen and expand student knowledge of the landscape of digital health. Discussion, deliverables, and group work will support a team project aimed at prototyping and pitching a new digital product to meet customer needs. Lecture topics include patient engagement and consumerism, user centered design, diagnostics and digital therapies, health access, and population health, interoperability, regulatory agencies, and emerging technologies. We will also hear from industry experts as guest lecturers. No prerequisites or prior experience required. (1.5 Credits for Summer 2025 & 3 Credits starting Fall 2025, Remote-Mostly Asynchronous)
CHIP 690-295
Foundations of Clinical Data Science
With the advent of Electronic Health Records (EHR) there are more opportunities than ever to make a real impact on patient health and the science of medicine using data. However, clinical data has unique characteristics and structures that can make it both challenging and rewarding to use in analytics. In this course, students will gain understanding of clinical data collection, models, context, and caveats through lectures and hands-on activities. Students will then apply that knowledge to real clinical data and use Python and other tools to perform analyses and replicate findings from literature. Offered Spring semester only.
*Prerequisite: CHIP 690-311 and CHIP 732 or INLS 523 and INLS 560, or equivalents (with instructor permission) Strongly recommend previous programming experience. (3 Credits, In-Person)
CHIP 690-297
Health App Development with JavaScript
This class will introduce students to basic programming concepts using JavaScript, a client-side language that runs in browsers to facilitate user interaction and dynamic real-time updates. A crucial component of the modern web design and workflow, it can be used to enhance user experience on a website, display vivid and complex visualizations like charts and maps, and communicate with servers in the background while navigating a website. This course will start with basics like variables, functions, classes, loops, conditionals, and Ajax. It will then will proceed to work with tools like charting and mapping libraries, as well as jQuery, React, Vue and/or other popular frameworks. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 690-307
Human Factors in Healthcare
Human Factors in healthcare course focuses on the use of human factors engineering methods to identify and mitigate system problems that cause human errors and patient safety hazards in healthcare. Basic principles and a variety of human factors tools are discussed and demonstrated through hands-on exercises and examples. (3 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 690-309
Quality Improvement and Visualization in Healthcare
This course covers the basic concepts of quality improvement with special emphasis on healthcare applications. This course uses many examples from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, leading hospitals, and other healthcare organizations. This course will also cover other current leading quality management practices including continuous quality improvement, Lean, and Six Sigma. Students will get hands-on experience using data visualization tools with the focus on Tableau software. Tableau’s fundamental concepts and features will be covered including how to connect to data sources, using the drag-and-drop interface, and creating compelling visualizations. (3 Credits, In-Person)
CHIP 690-310
Healthcare Data Analytics
This course will provide an overview of Data Analysis and reporting, via BigQuery. The course is project-oriented and will require students to understand the requirements before analyzing the data for designing and integrating data from multiple sources or reporting purposes. The course will also focus on some test case scenarios based on the requirements when a new dataset is created. While no specific courses are considered pre-requisites, students should have an understanding of SQL.
Prior experience in excel and SQL is strongly recommended. (1.5 Credits, Remote-Synchronous)
CHIP 690-314
Quality Improvement and Lean Six Sigma
This course uses a statistical engineering and a systematic approach to problem solving Lean Six Sigma philosophy (DMAIC) for improving healthcare and business processes using advanced graphical and statistical models. Students will define and learn the improvement opportunity, measurement system analysis, data collection, statistical analysis, design of experiment (DOE) methods, and statistical process control (SPC) methods. The course includes applications of statistical engineering to healthcare case studies. (3 Credits, Remote-Asynchronous)