Computer Applications in Medicine Elective
Computer Applications in Medicine Elective
2003 March/April
Due Mar 24.
Choose an article related to computers in medicine. E-mail me the title, author, source, year and page numbers of the article, by Mar 19.
The article must be at least four full pages long, and must have been published in the scientific literature within the past two years. It should discuss a specific medical application of computers, and not be just a general review of how to use the Web.
Prepare a summary (double spaced, about two pages long) using a word processor (preferably either WordPerfect or Word). The summary should include
Your document must contain
E-mail the word-processing document to me as an attachment, with a message stating what word processor was used.
Due Mar 31.
Read one of the Applications chapters from either Osheroff or Shortliffe & Perreault. Prepare a short summary and e-mail it to me as an attachment. The summary should contain a couple of sentences summarizing the chapter, and some comments about the chapter's relevance and usefulness.
E-mail the summary to me as plain text.
Due: ongoing
Read some or all of the article by Andrew Grygus and discuss it on the WebCT Bulletin Board.
Due Mar 26.
Choose an e-mail discussion list related to health care. Subscribe to the list, and post a description of the list to the Camel bulletin board on WebCT by Mar 21. If, within a day or two, the list appears to be inactive or not what you expected, unsubscribe and choose another one.
Monitor the list for one week and post a brief report about it to the bulletin board. The report should include discussion of items like how busy the list was, the ratio of useful messages to junk messages, how useful the list was, and what audience it might be most useful for.
Due Mar 25.
Choose a newsgroup related to health care. Check the current messages and make sure there are at least a few messages per day. Post the name of the newsgroup and a brief description to the Camel bulletin board on WebCT by Mar 21.
Review the existing messages, and monitor the group for a few days, then post a brief report about it to the bulletin board. The report should include discussion of items like how busy the group was, the ratio of useful messages to junk messages, how useful the group was, and what audience it might be most useful for.
Due: on-going
Contribute to class discussions via the Camel bulletin board on WebCT; e.g., comment on or ask about the reports about e-mail discussion lists and newsgroups, or topics discussed in class.
Due Mar 26.
Do a Medline search related to the topic of the book chapter you're reading, identifying a small number of recent and particularly relevant articles. Use the MeSH subject headings, at least to start with. Use Boolean operations or Limits to reduce the number of articles to no more than ten, from which you should select the two or three most relevant.
E-mail me a concise description of your search strategy and the results. Append the actual final search output from Ovid to your e-mail message; do not send it to me directly from Ovid.
Do a search for the same topic using Current Contents. Compare the results with those from Medline.
Pick an old reference related to the same topic, and do a Citation Index search for recent articles which cite it. Compare the results with the results of your Medline and Current Contents searches.
Due Mar 26.
Do a Web search to find two or three Web pages particularly relevant to the chapter you're reading. Do the search using all three of Alta Vista (search engine, not subject directory), Yahoo!, and one of the specialized medical resources, in that order. E-mail me a brief narrative description of your search strategy, and the best two or three links found.
Due Mar 28.
Choose a topic for a second article. The topic should be different from that of the article that you read for Assignment 1. As before, the article must be at least four full pages long; must have been published in the scientific literature within the past two years; and should discuss a specific medical application of computers, and not be just a general review of how to use the Web.
E-mail me a description of the topic by Mar 25.
Prepare a summary as an HTML file and include it in your Web site. The requirements for the length and nature of the summary are the same as for your first article summary. The only formatting requirement is that you should include headings, subheadings, emphasized text and strongly emphasized text, using appropriate HTML tags.
Due Apr 4.
Prepare Web pages and install on
Create a patient case presentation for display on your Web site. Include a relevant multiple-choice question, with links to pages explaining why each answer is right or wrong.
Your Web pages must be manually coded using a text editor or, equivalently, using a word processor and saving as a plain-text file. Do not use the Save as HTML feature of your word processor, nor any specialized HTML editor.
If you have photos or illustrations to include in your Web site, you can scan them using the scanner in the computer lab. Note that we can't include copyrighted material on Web pages without permission from the copyright holder.
Due Mar 28.
Send me an e-mail message containing your birth date with both decimal and binary numbers for the year, month and day. (You only need to include the last two digits of the year, e.g., 96.)
Due Mar 31.
Do the Camel software quiz on WebCT. Note that you may take the quiz multiple times in order to improve your score.