Unique global health informatics course to be offered at GSLIS

Ian Brooks
Ian Brooks, Research Scientist and Director, Center for Health Informatics

GSLIS will offer a new special topics course, LIS490GH: Global Health Informatics, for the first time in Spring 2016. Developed and taught by Research Scientist Ian Brooks, the course will be the first on the Urbana campus to expose students to the changing field of health informatics in developing parts of the world.

The course will teach students about the realities of health informatics in Africa and other parts of the globe, where the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) is improving the quality and safety of patient care. Students will examine the current state of global health informatics concentrating on open-source software initiatives, such as OpenMRS and DHIS2, and the transition from paper-based systems to increasingly sophisticated electronic replacements. They also will spend time studying the mHealth movement—medical services delivered via mobile devices—and the application of mobile technologies to healthcare.

“Students will gain an understanding of the realities of health informatics in Africa: healthcare information is still mostly paper based but increasingly ICT driven, and there are great differences in the levels of technology used throughout the country,” said Brooks.

Brooks developed the course with funding from the Center for African Studies and the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois. Each center contributed $5,000 toward the course. Other units on campus offer courses in medical informatics and public health, but they primarily focus on problems of domestic importance and do not expose students to the challenges and rewards of working in Africa or other developing areas.

At Illinois, Brooks represents both GSLIS and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications as a liaison to the health sciences community. In this role, he maintains and develops research relationships between GSLIS and NCSA in the area of health science information and works with faculty on externally funded projects and new initiatives. He also serves as a faculty affiliate in the University of Illinois Center for Health, Aging, and Disability and the Center for African Studies, as well as an adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Nursing. Brooks serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s external advisory board for high performance computing, the Pan American Health Organization’s advisory committee on e-health, and the International Society for Disease Surveillance’s research committee.

Tags:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Knox appointed interim dean

Professor Emily Knox has been appointed to serve as interim dean of the School of Information Sciences, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Until officially approved, her title will be interim dean designate. The appointment will begin April 1, 2025.

Emily Knox

iSchool instructors ranked as excellent

Fifty-six iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Fall 2024 and Winter 2024-2025. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the ratings from the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

iSchool Building

Ocepek and Sanfilippo co-edit book on misinformation

Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek and Assistant Professor Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo have co-edited a new book, Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press. An open access edition of the book is available, thanks to support from the Governing Knowledge Commons Research Coordination Network (NSF 2017495). The new book explores the socio-technical realities of misinformation in a variety of online and offline everyday environments. 

Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons book

Faculty receive support for AI-related projects from new pilot program

Associate Professor Yun Huang, Assistant Professor Jiaqi Ma, and Assistant Professor Haohan Wang have received computing resources from the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a two-year pilot program led by the National Science Foundation in partnership with other federal agencies and nongovernmental partners. The goal of the pilot is to support AI-related research with particular emphasis on societal challenges. Last month, awardees presented their research at the NAIRR Pilot Annual Meeting.

iSchool participation in iConference 2025

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2025, which will be held virtually from March 11-14 and physically from March 18-22 in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme of this year's conference is "Living in an AI-gorithmic world."