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This course on emerging technologies covers two major areas. The first area is technological forecasting and an overview of emerging trends in health care. The second area addresses information technologies in health care.

Module 1 - Technology Forecasting
Module 2 - Emerging Information Technologies
Module 3 - Technical Architecture
Module 4 - Infrastructure Emerging Technologies
Module 5 - Application Emerging Technologies

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Describe technology forecasting, its rationale, and its relationship to technological innovation.
• Describe key techniques for forecasting
• Define concepts for evaluating emerging information technologies.
• Define and explain the importance of architecture.
• Locate information sources about emerging information technology.
• Assess an emerging infrastructure information technology.
• Assess an application emerging information technology.

Tim Dotson is Clinical Pharmacist - Informatics at Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, with responsibilities involving medication management systems, CPOE, training, and clinical informatics. His advanced degrees are in pharmacy, business administration, and education. He holds a graduate certificate in Online Teaching and Learning and is a registered pharmacist.

Tim is actively involved in the CPHIMS certification process for HIMSS, having earned the CPHIMS credential, written questions for the exam, taught preparation workshops at HIMSS annual conferences, coauthored CPHIMS Workbook, and created and narrated the HIMSS six-hour CD review series. He has been a HIMSS Annual Conference Reviewer, a HIMSS mentor,  Program Chair and President-Elect of the Central Florida chapter, and is a HIMSS Fellow (FHIMSS.)

Tim has 28 years’ experience in the healthcare industry as a pharmacy director, software analyst, and information services director for two large health systems. In his spare time, he has designed and sold software, training modules, and consulting services to hundreds of hospitals. He is Executive Editor of Inside Healthcare Computing, a newsletter about the healthcare technology industry. He lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Barbara.

My #1 goal is to make this course on emerging technologies as interesting to you as it is to me. This is not a textbook-and-test course for inexperienced students. My assumption is that you work in healthcare and are interested in how IT supports its goals. This topic is a foundation of that IT support.

Don't be alarmed by the title of the course. A technical background is not required. I've taught it before to folks with minimal technical knowledge and they did fine. If you have a technical background, you may enjoy helping others who have questions.

Like the other courses in this series, this is an all-or-none credit system. If you complete the assignments successfully, you will pass. That allows you to concentrate on the parts of the material that interest you without worrying about keeping up a specific grade average. On the other hand, you have the responsibility to expend appropriate effort and to become engaged in the material. If you don't take the time to complete the assignments as scheduled, if you breeze through the assigned writings, or if you find reasons not to log on and participate, then you will not receive credit. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Lastly, you will have fun in the class as you learn. We'll have to work consistently to complete the material in five weeks, but you will enjoy it.

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Notes:

Modules start on Monday and assignments are due the following Sunday. Contact me if you are unable to complete the assignment on the due date.

June 28-July 4, 2010

Module 1 - Technology Forecasting

July 5-11, 2010

Module 2 - Emerging Information Technologies

July 12-18, 2010

Module 3 - Technical Architecture

July 19-25, 2010

Module 4 - Infrastructure Emerging Technologies

July 26-August 1, 2010

Module 5 - Application Emerging Technologies

 August 1, 2010

Final list of students earning credit sent to Uconn

June 30

• Post your personal introduction to the Introductions discussion topic. Include:
  

• Where you live and your employer (if working)
• Your background in healthcare or other field
• Prior coursework taken in this Certificate program or related programs
• How you hope to use what you'll learn here.
  
  Sign your posting with whatever name you like to be called . (20 minutes)

• Respond to at least two of the postings of your fellow learners. (10 minutes)

• Read the course material sections 1.1 through 1.7. Note that we will not cover the material related to the NHLBI working group, although you are encouraged to skim it. (30 minutes)
• Read this humorous view of technical forecasting. (5 minutes)
• Take a look at a typical "hype cycle" from Gartner . Note carefully the "maturity" legend at the bottom. (10 minutes)
• Create a Personal Technology Forecast Log in table form (Excel or Word, for example.) Use these 5 headings: Technology, Year Expected, Source Found, Impacting Factors, and Significance. Use a web search engine or other source to find at least 5 technologies you think will be important to healthcare (and specifically to healthcare IT if possible.) For each, list:

• a description of the technology
• the year you think it will be commonly available
• any reference you used to look up the technology
• what factors will influence the adoption of the technology
• how important you think it the technology be.
  
  Post your log to the Technology Forecasting discussion topic. (120 minutes.)

• Extra credit: discuss one of these questions in a posting to the Technology Forecasting discussion topic: (a) do you think the Gartner Hype Cycle makes sense and what products do you feel occupy the various maturity steps listed? (b) what resources would be good for performing technology forecasting? (20 minutes)

• Read the course material sections 2.1 through 2.6. (30 minutes)
• Assume that a startup company has announced a "revolutionary breakthrough" in natural language processing call NLP-X. It can process electronic free text (not speech) and create a structured output that decomposes the free text into coded terms and sentences. An organization can define the terms and sentences it is interested in finding in the text and NLP-X "learns" as it scans more text. NLP-X handles bad grammar, odd punctuation, and abbreviations and is purported to be 99% accurate. NLP-X is very cheap ($10 per user per year) and can run in a wide range of technical environments. NLP-X experiments are underway in a small number of healthcare provider organizations but the experiments have not been completed. Assume that the person you report to (your boss) has asked for a two-page memo describing NLP-X and how it could be used in the average hospital. This memo will be approved and sent to the CEO for action. Submit your memo to the Assessment discussion topic as an Word attachment, making sure to address these points:
   
• what are the core capabilities of the new technology?
• what roles or general categories of use does the technology appear to fill?
• what current problems can these roles solve or what opportunities can these roles create?
  
  Since the CEO will be reviewing your memo, make sure to be professional, concise, and authoritative. (120 minutes)
   
• Review the posted submissions and post a substantive comment to one other (at least 100 words). This may be an insighful analysis, an extension of the author's original idea, or references. (30 minutes)
• Extra credit: find products similar to NLP-X that are already available in the marketplace. Post your findings to the Assessment discussion topic. (20 minutes)

• Read the course material sections 3.1 through 3.4. (30 minutes)
• Choose the two architecture capabilities and characteristics that you believe are most important to your organization (choose from: supportability, reliability, potency, agility, and integratibility.) Then, submit a two page paper to the Proposal discussion topic that:
• analyzes how well your current architecture delivers those capabilities
• states your recommendations to improve the architecture
• includes references, assumptions, or interviews you used to arrive at those recommendations.
  
  Suggestion: you may want to review an IT person with technology expertise to assist with your analysis. If you don't work for an organization with an IT architecture, choose one to work with. (240 minutes.)
   
• Review the posted submissions and post a substantive comment to one other. This may be an insighful analysis, an extension of the author's original idea, or references. (30 minutes)
• Extra credit: think about your own desktop PC. How well does its architecture meet your two most important requirements? Post your thoughts to the Proposal discussion topic. (30 minutes)

• Read the course material section 4.1. (30 minutes)
• Choose one of the following current infrastructure technologies: server virtualization, storage area networks, wireless networking, radio frequency ID ( RFID,) biometric security, or open source server components such as Linux, MySQL, or PHP. Submit a two page paper to the Infrastructure Technology discussion topic that addresses these points:
• what does the technology do?
• what key healthcare problems can it solve?
• what have the early adopters of the technology learned?
• how should your organization proceed knowing all of the above?
  
  Cite at least five sources of information you used to reach these conclusions. Note: ask me if you would like to choose a different technology.  You may interview individuals and use them as a citation if desired. (240 minutes)
   
• Review the posted submissions and post a substantive comment to one other of at least 100 words. This may be an insighful analysis, an extension of the author's original idea, or references. (30 minutes)
• Extra credit: from your research above, post to the Infrastructure Technology discussion topic your thoughts on what infrastructure technology you feel is the single most important that your organization should consider, whether on this list or not. (30 minutes)

• No readings are required for this module. However, the Postscript contains a Gartner hype cycle for 2001 that is very interesting. Was Gartner right? Which of the technologies were successes vs. those that didn't pan out? You do not need to submit anything for this reading, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the discussion topic..
• Repeat the assignments for Module 4, addressing instead an application technology: computerized physician order entry, PACS, electronic data interchange, patient safety technologies, or any other healthcare application that interests you. (240 minutes)
• Post your paper to the Application Technology discussion topic:

• what does the technology do?
• what key healthcare problems can it solve?
• what have the early adopters of the technology learned?
• how should your organization proceed knowing all of the above?
  
  Cite at least five sources of information you used to reach these conclusions.
  

• Review the posted submissions and post a substantive comment to one other of at least 100 words. This may be an insighful analysis, an extension of the author's original idea, or references. (30 minutes)
• Send me an e-mail with any comments, suggestions, or recommendations you have to HIMSS, the University of Connecticut, or to me regarding this course.
• Complete the online Course Evaluation.