Standards, interoperability and regulation in health informatics

The course covers the following topics:

• Health informatics regulations, particularly for health software production: key international directives, national regulation, self-regulation.
• Security, privacy, and data protection. Principles, regulation and guidelines for application in health informatics.
• Standards and interoperability in health informatics. Key standards: HL7, CDA, IHE, etc.
• Health information systems conformance assessment.

After completing this course, you:

• can define what data security, privacy and safety
• know the central regulations related to health information systems, privacy, and security of health data, and know how they need to be taken into account in health information system development
• know general health informatics standards and interoperability approaches and can describe how they are applied in practice
• can apply the most important standards which are widely used in Finland in health information systems in software development
• can assess whether a health information system is implemented according to regulations and interoperability principles

Teaching

The course has an introductory live video lecture and a series of pre-recorded lectures. There are also seven exercises, of which at least six need to be completed to pass the course.

Exercises are organized in Tampere, typically in small groups but it is possible to do them remotely as individual exercises as well. Each particant also prepares a personal mind map of the course and returns that to the teacher.

The course can be completed entirely online.

The teacher of the course is Alpo Värri.

Alpo Värri has been involved in the standardization of healthcare information technology since the 1990s.

He chairs the WG2 Technology and applications working group TC251 Health Informatics of the European Committee for Standardization CEN Technical Committee. In addition, he has participated in the development of several standards in the ISO / TC215 and IEEE 11073 standardization committees.