IB.513 was offered for the first time in Spring 2014 as a web-enhanced lecture course focused on medical image informatics. The course (now BMBT5130) has been revised for Spring 2017
Course Description
The course will focus on the analysis of large biomedical data sets now extensively used in almost all fields of biomedical research, development and more recently to enable ‘Personalized Medicine.’ Central to the rapidly advancing “omics” fields of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics [to name only the most often mentioned “omics”] are methods for analyzing biomarker datasets with a goal of isolating specific sequencing information to inform understanding of a “mechanism of action” and in some cases to guide cutting edge treatment options. In addition to this most prominent & oft touted bioanalysis example, other advances heavily dependent on increase use data analytics and informatics include:
Personal health monitoring (i.e. heart, glucose monitoring) including fitness monitoring
Therapeutic Informatics (Imaging, Pharmacy, Laboratory) including the goal of integration of treatment information into individual Electronic Health Records
Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials
Evidence-based medicine
Public Health Policy and Health Systems Administration:
Example see: http://commed.umassmed.edu/topics-services/topic/data-analytics
The analysis & informatics skills that will be obtained during the semester are becoming fundamental to graduate training and research methods in many biotechnology disciplines. The student can expect to obtain basic proficiency in one widely used data analysis tool, R Programming Language, in order to implement basic data analytic methods such as importing various formatted datasets, ‘cleaning & subsetting’ data for analysis, use of statistical methods, visualizing datasets and executing reproducible analyses. Advanced topics will include machine learning, natural language processing, security and privacy protection. Students may implement their final course project using a dataset in any biomedical application area of their choosing, i.e. genomics, medical imaging, health policy informatics, and personal health monitoring etc.