Category: Education

Date set for MinneMUDAC 2017

Last year’s MinneMUDAC, the college level analytic team competition, had teams from over 20 colleges and universities from the Upper Midwest. This year’s event is now scheduled for Saturday, November 4th, and promises to be even bigger and better for the students involved. To make sure it is, we need your help.

You and your organization have two opportunities to be involved. As a judge, you’ll join other business and academic professionals in evaluating the work done by some of the brightest and most engaged students in the area. And this year the students will come from three separate groups: two year undergraduate programs, four year undergraduate programs and graduate level programs.

This year we’re also considering expanding the mini-job fair from last year. Last year’s job fair participants were enthusiastic about their opportunity to visit with and interview students who shared both examples of the work they’ve done and descriptions of the processes/procedures they had followed as part of in preparing for the MinneMUDAC event.

If you or others in your organization would like to be involved in expanding the event, we’d love to hear from you. Contact education@minneanalytics.org.

St. Catherine University Introduces Master’s Of Health Informatics

As the demand for data science-related skill sets continues to grow, colleges and universities are developing new programs to keep up. The field of Health Informatics is no exception: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in health information is projected to grow 15 percent through 2024, more than double the average growth for all occupations in the U.S.

The new Master’s of Health Informatics program at St. Catherine University in St. Paul is designed to give graduates the highly-specific skills necessary to work in Health Informatics. According to Program Director Merdi Rafiei, PhD, CHDA, the program emphasizes advanced research design and analytics; integration across data sets, systems and national boundaries; and practical expertise in cybersecurity and defense. Students learn to lead and influence this field through rigorous studies in:

  • Data management and applied health/data science
  • Acquisition: data quality and privacy
  • Applied analytics for clinical, financial and administrative data
  • Data Visualization

From a professional perspective, students immerse themselves in practice that teaches them to:

  • Implement, adapt and validate existing informatics concepts and approaches as they relate to specific healthcare problems
  • Collaborate across disciplines to define, discuss and resolve key issues in healthcare
  • Provide ethical leadership in the promotion of data privacy and cybersecurity  
  • Conduct research that advances the body of knowledge and standards associated with the management of health information in the electronic health environment
  • Engage in executive level, enterprise-wide research and information systems activities

For more information on St. Catherine’s Master’s in Health Informatics, visit www.stkate.edu/MHI.