NEWM-N 507 Digital Media for Healthcare
3 credits
- Prerequisite(s): INFO I575
- Delivery: On-Campus
Description
This course examines how healthcare systems employ digital media for marketing, education, communication, and ecommerce. Students research digital media usage in the healthcare industry and work in teams to design and execute an empirical research project culminating in a publication or online interface with digital media elements.
As Web 2.0 and mobile technologies mature, healthcare systems in the US and abroad have employed digital media for marketing, patient education, ecommerce, interactive communication, and so on. This course provides graduate students and undergraduate students an opportunity to research digital media usage in the healthcare industry. Students develop a project based on extensive empirical research on the needs of hospitals and patients: either (1) writing an empirical research paper or (2) developing a research-based, user-friendly online interface with digital media elements, such as video, audio, interactivity, for a patient portal, a hospital intranet, a healthcare insurance network, an independent patient education website, a healthcare social media website, or another kind of healthcare-related endeavor. The possibilities are broad in this digital territory. You simply need to find a niche that suits your interests. A niche can refer to a kind of hospitals, for instance, children’s hospitals online, a disease type, such as diabetes and digital support, a media type, such as patient education videos, or a device type, such as iPhone app for supporting bipolar disorder patients. The students work together in teams and work closely with the professor either on a paper or on a production project. The students are expected to publish with the professor or produce a new media/HCI project under the guidance of the professor.
The course will mainly take on the seminar format. For those who write a research paper, they will go through literature search and review, instrument design, sampling, data collecting, data analysis, and write-up. For those who will work on a project, they will read the assigned literature, search for more literature, survey the industry, survey the niche market, design a prototype, conduct a user test, and refine the design.
Learning Outcomes
- Assess applications of digital media to the healthcare industry using principles from human-computer interaction (HCI) and the media arts and sciences.
- Research and evaluate how digital media have been used in healthcare applications.
- Design and execute a research project on the use of digital media, employing appropriate research methods and HCI principles.
- Perform data collection for a research project in accordance with ethical principles.
- Write a research paper or produce a professional digital media or HCI project that is applicable to real healthcare needs.
- Evaluate critically empirical research publications and synthesize the results in the research project.
Policies and Procedures
Please be aware of the following linked policies and procedures. Note that in individual courses instructors will have stipulations specific to their course.