Computer Science in Healthcare
In the spring of junior year I decided to do an independent study on the ways that computer science is used in healthcare. I looked into the fields of data science, pharmacology, psychology, genomics, phylogenetics and clinical decision support systems.
Here is the 10 week plan I made for the independent study. For more information please see this link.
| Weekly Essential Questions | Weekly Assignment/Product | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WEEK 1 | What is the importance of computer science in healthcare? | Spend 45 minutes researching recent developments in healthcare technologies and compile notes and the resources that were used. Create a simple website and upload the notes. | General concepts in cs and healthcare Current challenges in healthcare Benefits to using technologies to solve these problems |
| WEEK 2 | How is computer science used to store and secure patient data? | Research how patient data is stored and take notes. Upload the notes to the webpage. Then do a coding project where patient data from Kaggle is parsed in and encrypted. | Health information systems Different types of data and how they are used and stored Privacy and security HIPAA laws |
| WEEK 3 | How can stored data be used to improve wellbeing and practices? | Research different ways healthcare data analysis is used in practice and take notes. Upload notes to a webpage. Then do a coding assignment with the same data from the previous week. Visualize the data, get statistics on the data and explore the data to find possible patterns and trends. The Power of Prediction in Healthcare—Chapter 2: Fundamentals of Data Science in Healthcare pg. 47-50 |
Healthcare analytics Process of analyzing healthcare data Usefulness of this analysis Technologies and algorithms that are used to analyze the data |
| WEEK 4 | How is technology used in processing DNA and proteins? | Do research on genomics, proteomics, and how these are combined with computer science. Take notes and add the notes to the website. Do a coding assignment with a dataset of DNA. Break the DNA into smaller pieces, make multiple copies and shuffle them. Attempt to reassemble the DNA. Practical Bioinformatics—Chapter 1: Introduction to Bioinformatics and Sequence Analysis pages 1-23 |
Genomic Data Analysis What is Genomics How is technology used in DNA sequencing, comparing genomes, and variant detection What is Proteomics How is technology used in protein identification and finding biomarkers associated with disease |
| WEEK 5 | How can technology be used to solve bigger picture questions such as evolution? | Research Phylogenetics and how scientists make evolutionary connections. Take notes on this and upload the notes to the website. Do a coding project where you have DNA sequences on 5 different species and compare the DNA between those species to make your own model of a phylogenetic tree. |
Phylogenetics Phylogenetic trees How is DNA and proteins used in understanding evolutionary relationships How is technology used to create phylogenetic trees |
| WEEK 6 | How is AI used in Pharmacology and what are the limitations of this? | Do research on how AI is used in pharmacology and take notes. Upload the notes to the website. Then, using data on a clinical trial, cluster the data on a graph to seperate the patients whose saw improvement in the trial and those who did not to find relationships. |
AI in Pharmacology Drug discovery Recruiting patients Monitoring of patients during the clinical trials Predicting an individual’s response to the drug administered The limitations of AI |
| WEEK 7 | How have clinical decision support systems revolutionized healthcare? |
Do research on how clinical decision support systems work. Take notes and upload the notes to the website. Do a coding assignment where you look at data on tumors and classify which tumors are benign and which are malignant. Deep Medicine—Chapter 9: AI in Health Systems pg. 186-192 |
Different applications of this What kinds of algorithms and programming languages are used? What are the limitations of this? |
| WEEK 8 | Is it desirable to use AI to replace human therapists? |
Do research on how AI is used in psychology and the benefits and limitations. Take notes and upload the notes to the website. Investigate a mental health study and parse the data to find trends between people’s mental health and their lifestyle. Deep Medicine: Chapter 8—Mental Health pg. 165-183 |
Can chat bots be used in psychotherapy? What are the risks and benefits? How does AI help human psychology and wellbeing What algorithms are used to achieve this? |
| WEEK 9 | Which aspect of healthcare and computer science am I interested in diving deeper into? | Do deeper research into the topic I am interested in, and brainstorm ideas for a final coding project. |
Can chat bots be used in psychotherapy? What are the risks and benefits? How does AI help human psychology and wellbeing What algorithms are used to achieve this? |
| WEEK 10 | Can I produce code that models a real-world application of computer science in healthcare? | The culminating product will be a website showcasing all the information I have gained on these topics. I will also choose a topic to dive deeper into and will do a final coding project surrounding that. | |
| WEEK 11 | Presentation to School Community |