Informatics and CS Majors
Health Informatics
“Our longer term vision is that every healthcare interaction benefits from all the world’s knowledge. Every
encounter that generates knowledge should add to the world’s knowledge.” Farzad Mostashari, M.D., National
Coordinator for Health IT
The caduceus is often seen as a symbol of medicine in the U.S, rather than the Rod of Asclepius.
Specialized Health Informatics Courses
INFO 3330 — Health Informatics
Introduction to and an overview of the evolution of information systems to support health services in the
healthcare industry, its current state and future directions and challenges. Students will learn the regulatory
requirements and standards that drive the data content and structure, collection, storage, retrieval, dissemination,
and transmission, as well as legal issues related to collection, use, and the security of health information. The
course will survey cross-functional factors and ethical concerns in the design and implementation of
information technologies (clinical, administrative, and learning), knowledge management principles,
professional practice trends, and explore some of the emerging information technology in health care.
INFO 4422 — Health Information Governance
The aim of this course is to provide a broad base of understanding of the range of issues that IT professionals
must be aware of upon entering the healthcare industry. Students will be exposed to the current state of
healthcare industry security environment and the larger regulatory environment in which healthcare
organizations operate. This is important in light of the recent move towards cloud-based electronic health
records (EHRs) and third party-developed health applications. Further, issues relating to privacy/security,
information governance and information risk assessment will also be covered. Finally, students will be exposed
to interventions that can help mitigate the risks identified.
INFO 4424 — Healthcare Workflow Process Analysis and Redesign
The aim of this course is to provide a broad-based of understanding of workflow processes in the healthcare
industry. In particular, the course will develop skills necessary to critically analyze and redesign the patient flow
processes and utilize health IT systems both in the administrative and clinical landscape to achieve greater
operational efficiency and provide higher quality of care to patients. Quality improvement methods and tools as
well as process change implementation, improvement, and management will also be discussed in this course.
INFO 4426 — Health Data Analytics
Introduction to and the use of intermediate analytical skills to identify trends, correlations to predict outcomes
and provide meaningful recommendations. Variety of data sources and structures are identified and transformed
into relevant information in the clinical context to recommend new treatments and technologies, improve
effectiveness and efficiency, design and plan policy and programs, improve service delivery and operations,
enhance sustainability, mitigate risk, and provide a means for measuring and evaluating critical organizational
data that helps the healthcare organization to achieve increased quality of care and patient satisfaction.
Professors specializing in Health Informatics:
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Karoly Bozan
Nima Kordzadeh
Sankara Srinivasan
Business Informatics
“Today’s information systems professional is less concerned with programming and more concerned with
pairing industry knowledge with technology knowledge to achieve strategic goals and make positive change in
an organization.” Michael Cincala, Manager at Deloitte & Touche
Business informatics is interwoven throughout a business to provide a competitive advantage.
Specialized Business Informatics Courses
INFO 3307 — Systems Analysis and Design
Develops systems analysis skills, using proven techniques, prototyping, and structured analysis and design
phases of the systems development life cycle. The course emphasizes Secure Software Design, which includes
secure design elements, software architecture, secure design review, and threat modeling. Requirements:
gathering is emphasized, including secure software requirements gathering to capture all of the security
requirements from various stakeholders and understand the sources and processes needed to ensure a more
effective design.
INFO 4430 — Web Application Development
Focuses on the development of dynamic, online applications using a programming language like PHP or
ASP.Net and a relational database. The course will consider Secure Software Implementation/Coding, which
involves secure coding practices, avoiding vulnerabilities, and reviewing code to ensure that there are no errors
in the code or security controls.
INFO 4432 — Mobile Application Development
This course will introduce mobile app programming and provide theoretical and practical knowledge to design
and build mobile applications. Students will learn various techniques in mobile app development using a
programming language like Java.
INFO 4482 — Systems Development & Implementation Methodologies
This course presents the process of software development and the methodologies to lower development costs,
increase software reliability, decrease development time and ensure application development success. An
overview and comparison of traditional and modern methods of software development are presented.
Professors specializing in Business Informatics:
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Robert Houghton
Thomas Ottaway
Kevin Parker
Computer Science
“Writing programs (or programming) is a very creative and rewarding activity. You can write programs for
many reasons ranging from making your living to solving a difficult data analysis problem to having fun to
helping someone else solve a problem.” Charles Severance, Python for Informatics: Exploring Information
Computer Science focuses on technical and theoretical programs. A degree in computer science provides
students with knowledge of computer operating systems, coding, and computer architecture.
Specialized Computer Science Courses
CS 3385 — Data Structures and Algorithms
The design, construction, and analysis of data structures. Abstract data types, lists, stacks, queues, trees, and
graphs. Sorting, searching, hashing, Theory. Includes significant coding projects. Uses Linux.
CS 4477 — Operating Systems
Processes description and control, threads, concurrency, memory management scheduling, I/O and files,
distributed systems, security, networking. Includes team implementation of a significant portion of an operating
system. Uses a different operating system.
CS 4481 — Programming Language Theory and Compilers
Programming language concepts. Regular expressions, context-free grammars, FSAs,stack machines.
Theory/algorithms for lexical, syntactic and semantic analysis, recursive descent and parsing, symbol tables,
object code generation. Design and implementation of a compiler.
CS 3344 — Artificial Intelligence
Fundamental principles and techniques of artificial intelligence systems; search strategies; knowledge
acquisition and representation; common sense reasoning; planning; machine learning; expert systems;
intelligent agents and multi-agent systems.
Professors specializing in Computer Science:
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David Beard
John Edwards