Health Informatics Program Gets You Into the Field in Three Years

“What’s unique with this particular Health Informatics program is it actually prepares software engineering trained students and teaches them what the healthcare industry is like,” says professor Sity Safario of Centennial College’s Health Informatics Technology offering. “It teaches them about healthcare structure and the health information systems that are available within it. I recommend the Health Informatics program at Centennial College for anyone who is very much interested in software engineering but also wants to help people.”

While Sity gives a great overall view of the Health Informatics program, let’s take a closer look at some specific details. First and foremost, Health informatics technology is an industry that deals with information, computer science and health care. It is concerned with the resources, devices, and methods that optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. It is applied to the areas of nursing, clinical care, dentistry, pharmacy, public health and biomedical research. Graduates of Informatics Technology are able to analyze and model data, develop healthcare databases and apply different computer medical-imaging techniques. They are also able to use tools, algorithms and health informatics methods for hospitals, schools, healthcare agencies and public health departments.

To enter the Health Informatics program, Centennial College expects that applicants have completed at least an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) or equivalent or be 19 years of age or older. Students must also possess Compulsory English 12C or U or skills assessment, or equivalent and Math 11M or U, or 12C or U, or skills assessment, or equivalent. To graduate from the program, a Minimum C grade average is required.

Once in the program, students spend three years studying Health Informatics courses that emphasize object-oriented software design methodologies, user-oriented interface design, structure of healthcare information systems, telehealth, data security and privacy in healthcare systems. The health informatics program also focuses on technologies such as C#, Java, J2EE, Oracle, MS-SQL Server, Unix/ Linux, Microsoft’s .NET, HTML/ XML, Rational/ WebSphere, Data warehousing and Data mining, and BI tools in healthcare systems and more. Specific courses within this Health Informatics program include: Programming, Software Engineering Fundamentals, Introduction to Database Concepts, Functions and Number Systems, Web Interface Design, Discrete Mathematics and more. All courses are also delivered using leading-edge technology that is geared towards industry standards. To complement theoretical learning, the offering includes two software development projects in the field of health informatics. These real world business applications require students to utilize all the technical, systems and business skills gained during their studies.

Graduates of Health Informatics Technology can work as: applications developers, health data analysts, database developers, systems implementation specialists, record assistants and business/systems analysts.