Course Descriptions
Core Graduate Courses
BIME 533 Public Health and Clinical Informatics (4)
Public Health and Clinical Informatics provides an overview of the evolving field of public health informatics and its connection to clinical informatics. The course will include topics such as: public health history, public health data, surveillance, epidemiology, environmental health, health communications, public health policy and global health informatics. Information systems and tools relevant to public and clinical informatics will be covered. Informatics-specific topic will include data and vocabulary standards, syndromic surveillance systems, clinical decision support, privacy and security, interoperability, data integration, organizational change, health information exchange, and meaningful use in clinical applications. The course content will be delivered through a combination of didactic lectures, presentations, in-class exercises, and discussions. Students will gain experience in investigating and evaluating informatics solutions to clinical and public health problems.
BIME 534 Informatics for Biology and Translational Science (5)
Introduction to fundamental biological processes and information, analytical problems in research and medicine, and informatics approaches to these issues. Topics include computational biology, biomedical data standards, pathway analysis, genomics/multiomics, clinical research informatics, translational bioinformatics, biomedical imaging, data-driven research, artificial intelligence, and language/sequence models and their applications.
BIME 537 Informatics Research and Evaluation Methods (4)
In this course, we cover the breadth of research methodologies used in the multi-disciplinary field of Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI). BHI is grounded in computer science, information science, statistics, biology, and medicine, and the research methods for the field draw on these varied traditions. A high-level course objective is to improve students’ ability to critically assess research and evaluation studies, regardless of the methodology used. Students also learn how to conduct literature reviews and write research plans and proposals, with a focus on topics including sources of bias, study design, evaluation metrics, quality measures, and quantitative/qualitative study approaches.
BIME 543 Consumer and Clinical Informatics (4)
Introduces clinical and consumer health informatics. Covers theories of health behavior and information behavior, and their application in domains such as mobile health (mHealth) and telehealth. Introduces clinical roles, culture, and workflow, and how these relate to informatics systems. Also introduces key issues such as patient-centered communication, health literacy, patient empowerment, patient generated data, and privacy.
BIME 550 AI and Large Language Models for Biomedical Applications (5)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly transforming biomedical research and healthcare by enabling new capabilities in clinical documentation, biomedical literature analysis, question answering, and decision support. Where did these systems come from? Where will they likely be used in biomedicine? This course provides both a broader historical perspective in artificial intelligence, as well as the foundations and applications of large language models in biomedical applications. For the former, students will explore efforts to define, represent, and intelligently use knowledge and data in biomedicine. Students will also learn rule-based systems, the use of standards and ontologies for biomedical knowledge, and challenges for black-box learning systems such as neural nets. For the latter, students will learn of transformer architectures, model fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation methods, and ethical and regulatory considerations in healthcare AI. Through readings, discussions, and hands-on assignments, students will gain practical experience building and evaluating LLM-based systems for biomedical tasks.
BIME 554 Biomedical Information Interactions and Design (4)
This course introduce the theoretical frameworks and research methodologies that underpin the study of human-information interactions and the design of technology to support or enhance those interactions. The course will emphasize how findings from studies of people can be used to inform and improve the design of information systems in biomedical contexts. It will cover a variety of design methodologies as well as exercises in design thinking. Examples will be drawn from clinical informatics, personal health informatics, public health informatics, and bioinformatics.
BIME 585-587 Teaching, Learning and Communication in Biomedical and Health Informatics (1 Credit per quarter, required for Autumn, Winter and Spring quarters)
Informaticians, regardless of their career path, require a core set of professional skills. These include active engagement in life-long learning’ to communicate effectively using multiple channels to a broad range of audiences; to productively participate in interdisciplinary teams; to adopt ethical practices in research and application’ to and to teach, manage, and lead. This course focuses heavily on developing these skills. In each area you will have multiple opportunities to practice, to learn from peer feedback, and to improve.
Undergraduate BHI courses
BIME 300 Transformational Technologies for Biology, Medicine, and Health (5)
How are new information technologies affecting health care and medicine? When you visit the doctor, is he/she using modern information management methods? Are medical errors more likely or less likely to occur with new technologies? And how will new knowledge about the human genome affect health care?
In this course, we introduce the field of biomedical & health informatics through three modules that focus on current technologies in the field: (1) Electronic health records (EHRs), (2) Data science and secondary use of EHR data, and (3) Translational bioinformatics & personalized medicine. Each module will include hands-on exercises, and course evaluation will be based primarily on team projects that explore the technologies involved.
BIME 435 Informatics in Health Care (5)
How can you improve healthcare with informatics? There are growing career opportunities to transform healthcare using information science and technology!
This course introduces information technology applied in healthcare across three modules that 1) overview the U.S. healthcare system, 2) establish an understanding of clinical information systems used in healthcare, including electronic health records, and 3) survey applications in clinical informatics, such as virtual health care and the learning health system.
BHI Colloquia
BIME 590 Biomedical and Health Informatics Research Colloquium (1-3, max. 12)
Computers and information technology are improving and changing healthcare education, research, and clinical practice. Informatics faculty and researchers from the UW and affiliated institutions present their research findings as well as discuss their views of national developments in their respective disciplines. Credit/no credit only. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
BIME 591 Selected Topics in Biomedical & Health Informatics (1, max. 12)
This course provides a forum for extensive interactive research discussions. The course format is variable depending on course leader and topic. Both students and faculty may present, and the format may be journal club, practical training, or in-depth research work. Usually, the aim is a focused exploration of a current BHI research topic of interest. Credit / No credit only.
Examples of Seminar Titles:
- Adventures in R: A Practical Coding Seminar
- Trust Between Providers and Patients and the Role of Technology
- Information Technology and Mental Health
- Robotic Companion Pets for Older Adult Wellness
- BHI – Kaggle Competition Class: Peer-learning by Solving Real Problems
- Precision Medicine and Informatics
- Biological Pathway Analysis: Trends and Applications
Other BHI Courses
BIME 600 Independent Study/Research (1-10)
Individual readings or study, including independent study in preparation for doctoral examinations, research, etc.
BIME 700 Master’s Thesis (1-15)
BIME 800 Doctoral Dissertation (1-10)