Program Mission and Goals

With data analytics becoming central to the healthcare industry to improve healthcare outcomes, optimize the operations of healthcare organizations, and improve patient healthcare outcomes, the primary goal of this Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Analytics is to prepare healthcare and data analytics professionals to advance their careers in the healthcare analytics industry in 10 months. Specifically, students will be prepared for a range of healthcare analytics career opportunities in various healthcare organizations, including hospitals, medical research centers, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare technology companies. This is accomplished by helping students achieve the following specific learning goals through our deliberately designed curriculum:

1. Become familiar with necessary healthcare knowledge and terminology that is critical in today's data-driven healthcare practice. The specific learning outcomes include:
   1. Develop a solid understanding of the healthcare systems in the United States, current challenges and future opportunities in digital, data-driven healthcare practice, and patient-centered healthcare systems.
   2. Become familiar with the basic definitions, key concepts, terminology, and historical context of medical practice.
   3. Describe the rapid changes in today's healthcare services, especially the trending data-driven healthcare systems, and the general functions, purposes, and benefits of health analytics in improving the quality and safety of patient care outcomes in various healthcare and medical settings.
2. Build a solid understanding of health information technologies and healthcare analytics techniques, with a special focus on their applications in real-world healthcare practice. The specific learning outcomes include:
   1. Identify and describe various types of information system applications commonly used in the healthcare industry, such as electronic health records (EHR), remote patient monitoring (RPM), and clinical decision support (CDS).
   2. Understand the process of healthcare information system acquisition, implementation, configuration, maintenance, training, and support.
   3. Understand the legal and ethical issues that pertain to information technology specific to clinical settings within the healthcare environment, including laws and regulations, privacy, confidentiality, and security.
3. Develop robust technical skillsets in data management and analytics, including state-of-the-art AI techniques, to solve practical healthcare problems. The specific learning outcomes include:
   1. Identify, collect, store, and retrieve healthcare data from patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations and sources using database management systems, such as SQL and NoSQL.
   2. Develop concrete skills in solving real-world healthcare analytic problems using both traditional statistical analysis methods and cutting-edge techniques, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, etc.
   3. Communicate analysis results effectively and intuitively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders by using appropriate visualization techniques to support their medical decision-making.
   4. Explore emerging technologies in healthcare, including e-Health, telemedicine, health social media, deep learning, cloud computing, and blockchain