Unit rationale, description and aim
The rapidly emerging digital health landscape is requiring fundamental knowledge relating to data, data use and digital ecosystems. In addition, there is a need for professionals working in health to understand how data can be used to improve service provision and person-centredness. Health data represent the greatest asset supporting value-based health care within a digital health ecosystem. Health data supports individual patient health journeys, person-centred care, work and communication flows. Secondary use of health data informs decision making, resource management, analytics, reporting, funding and policy development. Health data fundamentals refer to specialised components of the new interdisciplinary science now known as digital health. These include health data, their attributes, collection, storage, stewardship, governance, semantics, and the ethical use as components of any data supply chain within a digital health ecosystem.
The health data supply chain needs to not only support clinical practice at every point of care, but support all user needs throughout the national health system as whole. There is a need for compliance with legislative requirements, preservation of data privacy and maintenance of security measures throughout. All data use must comply with ethical principles and support human dignity for those served by each health service provider within a digital health ecosystem.
In this unit, students are introduced to the key concepts relating to health data including concept representation, semantics, ontologies, information management and ecosystem networks. The focus is on degrees of data expressivity and formalism required to support automation, advanced data analytics, national operational activities, semantic data processing and communication flows. The aim of this unit is to provide clinicians, health service and ICT professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to address data integrity throughout the data supply chain, enabling them to have confidence that data integrity is maintained.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Explain the importance of the adoption and use of ...
Learning Outcome 01
Describe the health data supply chain and data use...
Learning Outcome 02
Analyse information and communication flows requir...
Learning Outcome 03
Critically evaluate the link between the adoption ...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics will include:
· Health languages and their attributes suitable for a digital era
· Health data standards, including data specification for the data supply chain, maintaining data integrity, stewardship
· Coding and classification systems, ownership, use cases and implementation
· Terminologies, degrees of data expressivity and formalisms
· Domain ontologies, reference information models
· Data modelling, templates, presentation formats
· Data collection, accurate little data, data value sets
· Data storage methods and data supply chains
· Registries, data lakes, data hubs and warehouses
· Managing digital data access, transfers, linkages, querying
· Big data, ethical data retrieval, primary and secondary use, legislation
· Data/information governance at all levels
Assessment strategy and rationale
In order to pass this unit, students are expected to demonstrate achievement of every unit learning outcome, submit three graded assessment tasks, and obtain a minimum mark of 50% in graded units. In order to reward students for engagement and performance, a final graded result will be awarded.
The assessment strategy for this unit allows students to demonstrate a critical mindset in evaluating the impact of data and information management strategies associated with the delivery of person-centred health services. In order to develop this level of capability, in the first two assessment tasks students will be required to demonstrate their knowledge on how to identify and evaluate the use of data standards within the context of a data supply chain which is a foundational infrastructure component of any digital health ecosystem. The final assessment task allows students to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge and understanding of work in a digital health enhanced world through a case study assignment. The assessment tasks for this unit are designed for students to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome.
Overview of assessments
Online mode
Assessment Task 1 Assessment Task 1 requires stud...
Assessment Task 1
Assessment Task 1 requires students to apply their critical knowledge of concepts and skills learned throughout this unit of study. The purpose of this assessment task is to evaluate the student’s grasp of the complexities associated with data standards within any health care organisation and setting supporting individual health journeys.
Example: A written reflective journal based on contributions to online discussions throughout the unit.
25%
Assessment Task 2 Assessment Task 2 requires stud...
Assessment Task 2
Assessment Task 2 requires students to apply knowledge learned in their exploration of how data attributes and characteristics interact with various health informatics data exchange standards, and reflect on retaining data sharing semantics and information computability.
Individual written report.
30%
Assessment Task 3 Assessment Task 3 requires stud...
Assessment Task 3
Assessment Task 3 requires students to apply their critical knowledge of concepts and skills learned throughout the unit and produce a case study report. The case study can be based on the student’s work situation where applicable, or a defined example case study. The purpose of this assessment task is to examine students’ grasp of both theoretical and practical aspects of the unit through their problem solving and application of theoretical knowledge to real-life health service delivery problems in a given scenario.
Case Study.
45%
ACU Online
Assessment Task 1 Assessment Task 1 requires stud...
Assessment Task 1
Assessment Task 1 requires students to apply their critical knowledge of concepts and skills learned throughout this unit of study. The purpose of this assessment task is to evaluate the student’s grasp of the complexities associated with data standards within any health care organisation and setting supporting individual health journeys.
Example: A written reflective journal based on contributions to online discussions throughout the unit.
25%
Assessment Task 2 Assessment Task 2 requires stud...
Assessment Task 2
Assessment Task 2 requires students to apply knowledge learned in their exploration of how data attributes and characteristics interact with various health informatics data exchange standards, and reflect on retaining data sharing semantics and information computability.
Individual written report.
30%
Assessment Task 3 Assessment Task 3 requires stud...
Assessment Task 3
Assessment Task 3 requires students to apply their critical knowledge of concepts and skills learned throughout the unit and produce a case study report. The case study can be based on the student’s work situation where applicable, or a defined example case study. The purpose of this assessment task is to examine students’ grasp of both theoretical and practical aspects of the unit through their problem solving and application of theoretical knowledge to real-life health service delivery problems in a given scenario.
Case Study.
45%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit uses an active learning approach to support students in the exploration of knowledge essential to the discipline. Students are provided with choice and variety in how they learn, and will have access to self-paced learning modules, readings, webinars, discussion forums and assessment tasks. While there are no formal lectures for this unit, students will be required to attend online forums, which will provide opportunities to analyse and evaluate various health data-related challenges and concepts to meet unit learning outcomes. Online forums and chat rooms will facilitate learning by sharing experiences and findings with peers, which is particularly effective for exploring data standard selection and use. This learning approach is flexible and inclusive, allowing students the opportunity to analyse and critically evaluate the complexity associated with health data, information and knowledge attributes and the adoption of technical and data standards. Activities encourage students to bring their own examples to demonstrate understanding, application and engage constructively with their peers. Students receive regular and timely feedback on their learning, which includes information on their progress.
Students should anticipate undertaking 150 hours of study for this unit, including readings, participation in online forums and completion of assessment tasks.