Informatics in Healthcare SBS MSC Assignment

General Instruction

• All assignments are to be submitted on 17th July 2025 on:

• Any assignment submission extension request must be sent to Azra Fatima (Assistant Vice President – Academics) at 5 days before the submission date with a valid reason and documentary evidence.

• APA 7th edition referencing guidelines must be followed.

• Similarity between students’ work is strictly not accepted. Any student found with similar work will receive Zero and fail the course.

• Plagiarism is an academic offence and will not be tolerated.

• Any revaluation request must be submitted within 5 days of grade release. (Forms and details will be provided upon request.)

• Revaluation cannot be requested for plagiarized assignments.

• Late submissions within 1 week after the deadline will incur a 20% penalty.

• Re-evaluation is NOT applicable for failed courses if the marks are below 59. (59–69 range is eligible.)

• Any assessment rescheduling request must be made within 1 week after the original assessment date.

• Assignment once submitted to the exam board is final for marking.

• A second extension cannot be granted without supporting documents.

• Students must keep a copy of their work in case the submitted version is misplaced.

Note: Please ensure adherence to all instructions above. Failure to follow them will not be the responsibility of ATMS.

Plagriasim

Plagiarism is presenting material from a source without crediting the original author. For longer submissions and reports, students must attach an Assignment Cover Sheet, confirming that the work is original and not submitted previously for any other assignment or course.

Forms of Plagiarism Include

• Copying another author’s work without acknowledgment

• Copy–paste without correct citation

• Copying keywords or structure while changing a few words without crediting the source

• Copying sentence structure without proper citation

• Following another author’s structure or flow of ideas

• Submitting work created by a third party (e.g., writing service or another student)

• Copying from published sources without acknowledgment

• Incorrect or missing quotation marks

• Improper in-text citations or references

• Incorrect or incomplete bibliography/reference list

• Claiming ownership of another author’s ideas

• Allowing another student to copy your work

• Falsifying results

Plagiarism tolerance for MSC: 8%.

If plagiarism exceeds this limit, students will be allowed one chance to revise and resubmit. If it still exceeds the allowed percentage, one grade lower will be awarded from the originally achieved grade.

Assignment Task

You will take on the role of a Healthcare Informatics Consultant working for a client organization of your choice. This can be the healthcare organization you work for or any other healthcare organization you are familiar with.

Your task is to assess the client organization’s current use of informatics and develop recommendations to improve their systems for better efficiency and effectiveness.

Your Report Should Include:

1. Analysis of Current Informatics Systems

Analyze the informatics systems currently used by your selected healthcare organization.

2. Detailed Investigation of One Informatics System

Conduct an in-depth evaluation of one specific informatics system that contributes to operational efficiency.
Provide recommendations for how the system can be improved.

3. Ethical Implications & Data Policies

Assess the ethical implications of handling data within the organization.
Discuss the policies and practices implemented by the organization to address and mitigate ethical concerns.

Reference Requirements

You must use a mix of:

• Academic sources (books, journal articles)

• Non-academic sources (websites, news articles, professional publications, etc.)

Assessment requirements

• Role & context: You act as a Healthcare Informatics Consultant assessing a real healthcare organisation (employer, placement site, or other known organisation).

• Deliverables:

  1. Analysis of current informatics systems used across the organisation (overview, purpose, scope, users, interfaces).

  2. Detailed investigation of one informatics system (in-depth evaluation of a single system that contributes to operational efficiency, e.g., EHR/EMR, HIS, PAS, RIS/PACS, LIMS, CDS, telehealth platform). Include strengths, weaknesses, workflows, data flows, user experience, performance metrics and recommended improvements.

  3. Ethical implications & data policies: privacy, consent, data sharing, governance, risk mitigation, legal/regulatory alignment.

• References: mix of academic (books, peer-reviewed journals) and non-academic sources (policy documents, vendor specs, organisational documents, reputable websites). Use APA 7th edition for in-text citations and reference list.

• Assessment constraints & rules to mention (must be followed in submission):

  • Submission date: 17 July 2025.

  • Extension: Requests to Azra Fatima (Assistant VP – Academics) 5 days before submission date with valid reason + documentary evidence. A second extension requires supporting documents.

  • Plagiarism tolerance (MSC): 8%. Plagiarism >8%: one revision allowed; if still >8% a penalty of one grade lower. Plagiarism is an academic offence : quoting, paraphrasing, referencing rules apply; APA7 required.

  • Late penalty: submissions up to 1 week late incur 20% penalty.

  • Re-evaluation: must be requested within 5 days of grade release; not allowed for plagiarized work; re-eval not applicable for failed courses if marks <59>

  • Retention: keep a copy of your work.

Mentor’s step-by-step approach to the assessment 

This section describes the process the Academic Mentor followed while guiding the student, in logical order, with brief explanation of actions in each step.

1. Project scoping & selection (Mentor guidance)

   • Goal: confirm suitable client organisation and define scope.

   • Actions: Mentor asks student to justify choice (size, services, informatics maturity). Student selects the organisation and obtains a short letter/email from a contact (if using a workplace). Mentor confirms that the scope is manageable (e.g., hospital-wide overview + one system deep-dive).

2. Define objectives and success criteria

   • Goal: create clear assessment objectives tied to operational efficiency, safety, privacy, and cost.

   • Actions: Mentor helps student convert these into measurable success criteria: reduced user task time, fewer error reports, improved data availability, compliance with privacy rules.

3. Literature & policy review (research plan)

   • Goal: gather academic and non-academic sources to frame the evaluation.

   • Actions: Mentor provides a reading list template (key journals, standards like ISO/HL7, local legislation, vendor docs). Student performs searches, annotates sources, and stores citations in a reference manager (APA7).

4. Data collection & stakeholder mapping

   • Goal: collect primary and secondary evidence.

   • Actions: Mentor instructs student to use a mixture of: document review (policies, architecture diagrams), stakeholder interviews (clinicians, IT, records staff), observation of workflows, and simple quantitative metrics (downtime logs, helpdesk tickets, average task times). Mentor provides interview question templates and an observation checklist.

5. System inventory & baseline analysis

   • Goal: produce a clear inventory of informatics systems (name, vendor, modules, interfaces, users, data stored).

   • Actions: Mentor coaches on mapping integrations, drawing a simple data flow/architecture diagram, and summarising system purposes and key metrics.

6. Select one system for in-depth evaluation

   • Goal: choose the system with greatest operational impact or the one with clear improvement opportunities (e.g., EHR).

   • Actions: Mentor helps the student justify the choice and plan the deeper evaluation (usability testing, performance logs, error rate analysis, security checklist).

7. In-depth evaluation of the chosen system

   • Goal: assess functionality, usability, interoperability, data quality, performance, security, and compliance.

   • Actions: Mentor shows how to structure findings: current state → evidence → root cause analysis → recommended changes. Use SWOT or gap analysis to summarise.

8. Develop recommendations

   • Goal: provide practical, prioritised, and evidence-based recommendations (technical, process, training, governance).

   • Actions: Mentor teaches how to categorise recommendations by impact and effort (quick wins vs long term), include timelines, estimated resources, KPIs for monitoring, and a change management plan.

9. Ethics & data governance assessment

   • Goal: evaluate consent processes, access controls, data sharing agreements, de-identification, retention and breach response.

   • Actions: Mentor helps student map ethical risks to controls and propose policy and procedure additions (e.g., role-based access, audit trails, staff training on data handling).

10. Report drafting, referencing & compliance checks

    • Goal: produce final report with APA 7 citations and adherence to submission rules.

    • Actions: Mentor reviews draft structure, flags potential plagiarism risks, verifies that all quotes/paraphrases are cited, and checks that the similarity index is ≤8% (or documents remediation if not). Mentor ensures the cover sheet and any required forms are attached.

11. Final review and quality assurance

    • Goal: ensure professional presentation and compliance with formatting and assignment policies.

    • Actions: Mentor performs final proofread, checks APA7 reference list, confirms figures/tables have captions and sources, and ensures submission package includes the Assignment Cover Sheet and any supporting evidence (interview consent forms, screenshots, logs).

Recommended report structure 

1. Title page & Assignment Cover Sheet (include declaration of originality)

2. Executive summary (150–250 words) : key findings and top 3 recommendations

3. Introduction : context, organisation profile, scope, objectives (≈300–400 words)

4. Methodology : data sources, interviews, observation, metrics, limitations (≈300–400 words)

5. Inventory & current state analysis : overview of systems, architecture diagram, user groups (≈600–800 words)

6. In-depth system evaluation : chosen system description, workflows, evidence, metrics, SWOT/gap analysis (≈800–1,000 words)

7. Recommendations : prioritized with impact/effort, implementation plan, KPIs (≈600–800 words)

8. Ethical implications & data policies: privacy, consent, governance, proposed policy changes (≈400–600 words)

9. Conclusion : summary and next steps (≈200–300 words)

10. References : APA 7th edition (include both academic and non-academic sources)

11. Appendices : interview notes, logs, diagrams, consent forms

Example of mentor wording used while guiding the student

• “For your methodology, combine at least two primary data sources (one interview + one direct observation) and two secondary sources (policy + peer-reviewed article).”

• “Map the data flow from acquisition → storage → use → sharing. Highlight three points where PHI/identifiers are exposed.”

• “Prioritise recommendations that reduce clinician clicks and improve data availability : these show measurable operational gains.”

• “Before final submission run a similarity check, and if the result is >8% produce an annotated revision showing corrective edits and additional original analysis.”

How the outcome was achieved 

• Evidence collected: system inventory spreadsheet, architecture diagram, three stakeholder interviews (clinician, IT manager, records officer), 30 minutes of observation in clinical workflow, vendor spec pdf, organisation privacy policy.

• Analysis performed: data flow mapping, gap analysis for interoperability, usability observations, root cause listing of top 3 problems (slow logins, inconsistent data fields, missing audit trails).

• Key recommendations delivered:

  1. Implement single sign-on + role-based access to reduce login failures and audit risk (short term).

  2. Standardise patient identifiers and data fields across systems via an organisation master-patient index (MPI) (medium term).

  3. Deploy basic API/HL7 interface between the lab system and EHR to eliminate manual results entry (medium term).

  4. Introduce quarterly staff training + updated data handling SOPs + incident response plan (immediate).

  5. Establish a Data Governance Committee and update retention & de-identification policies (governance).

• Ethical controls proposed: explicit consent templates, regular access log reviews, mandatory privacy training, de-identification procedures for secondary use of data.

Learning objectives covered 

• Understand and describe current healthcare informatics systems and ecosystem.

• Conduct a targeted systems assessment using mixed methods (document review, interview, observation).

• Apply data flow mapping and gap/SWOT analysis to identify operational inefficiencies.

• Propose evidence-based technical, process and governance recommendations to improve efficiency and safety.

• Assess ethical implications of health data handling and propose policy-level mitigations.

• Demonstrate proper academic practice: APA7 referencing, original analysis, and compliance with institutional plagiarism policy.

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