GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
E. WALSH SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS PROGRAM 

STIA 443   E-HEALTH: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTHCARE
(FALL 2002)

R. J. Rodrigues 

COURSE OBJECTIVE

The course aims at providing the core knowledge required by professionals that will work as nternational development project officers or scientific advisors with government agencies, and by health professionals involved in public or private international ICT projects.

e-Health provides public and private health services the tools with which to think, redesign, and rework how they operate in order to improve productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency. Those tools employ digital technologies and networked data processing to create a new environment of universal access to information and the globalization of communications, businesses, and services.

The course reviews, from an international perspective, the rapidly evolving information and communication technologies as they apply to health practice in a variety of environments. It introduces students to issues, constraints, and strategies in the development, deployment, and management of health sector information systems and projects emphasizing the variety of market and systems policies, deployment, and management issues faced by different countries and models of healthcare organization and practice.

At the end of the course students should have acquired the basic knowledge to:

(a) Understand the possibilities offered by ICT health applications in an international setting and the expectations, benefits, and constraints of ICT deployment in the public and private subsectors of different countries;

(b) Qualify to participate in health ICT development and deployment teams involving national and international business partners, international commercial or collaborative projects, and national and multilateral technical cooperation agencies;

(c) Assist national governments and international technical cooperation programs in the development of national and institutional health ICT policies and plans that are congruent with the overall mission and goals of the particular model of healthcare organization.