INFO90001: Digital Health & Informatics Methods

INFO90001: Digital Health & Informatics Methods
Semester 2,2024 Module 1

University of Melbourne

Assignment 1: Research in Health Informatics

During this first module we are discussing the topic of research in health informatics. This
involves understanding the types of problems addressed by health informatics researchers,
the types of research questions that health informaticians try to answer, and the methods
used to address them.

For this first individual assignment we will reflect on these issues by looking at one health
informatics scientific publication. The report should have approximately 1000 words.
1. Consider the following study:
Yu, Y., Jiang, G., Brandt, E., Forsyth, T., Dhruva, S. S., Zhang, S., ... & Drozda Jr, J. P.
(2023). Integrating real-world data to assess cardiac ablation device outcomes in a multicenter
study using the OMOP common data model for regulatory decisions: implementation and
evaluation. JAMIA open, 6(1), ooac108.

Study link

2. Describe what is the research problem the authors addressed and explain why it is
an interesting/relevant problem.
3. Describe the research question the authors addressed through this publication.
4. What was the study design? How would you classify the study design using the ter-
minologies used in the clinical study design video? How about the health informatics
study designs in section 3.3 of Friedman?
5. List 3 MeSH terms you would use in your own literature search for a similar study.
(Hint: make sure they are real MeSH terms and that you have tested them to see
whether they do bring relevant results!)
6. After reading this study (step 1), identify at least 3 ways that this research design would
need to change if it were to be conducted in the Australian healthcare system.