Computer Applications in Medicine Elective
Computer Applications in Medicine Elective
2004 April
Due Apr 21.
Choose an article related to computers in medicine. E-mail me the title, author, source, year and page numbers of the article, by Apr 15.
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 Apr 28.
Read one of the Applications chapters from Shortliffe & Perreault. Prepare a short summary and e-mail it to me as an attachment. The summary should contain a couple of sentences summarising the chapter, and some comments about the chapter's relevance and usefulness.
E-mail the summary to me as plain text.
Due: ongoing
Read at least one major section of the article by Andrew Grygus and discuss it on the WebCT Bulletin Board.
Due Apr 21.
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 Apr 16. 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 Apr 20.
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 Apr 16.
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 Apr 21.
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.
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.
E-mail me a brief narrative description of your search strategies 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.
Due Apr 21.
Do a Web search to find two or three Web pages particularly relevant to the chapter you're reading. Use
Due Apr 27.
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 the title, author, source, year and page numbers of the article, by Apr 23.
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, emphasised text and strongly emphasised text, using appropriate HTML tags.
Due Apr 30.
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 specialised 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 Apr 26.
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 Apr 26.
Do the Camel software quiz on WebCT. Note that you may take the quiz multiple times in order to improve your score.