The Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering has launched a new online master's degree program in Healthcare Systems Engineering aimed at preparing engineers and health care professionals to make health care more efficient, affordable, and safer. Approved by the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the new program is now accepting applications for the spring 2019 semester.
"Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of patients die from preventable harms, significant health care costs are wasted, and hospital-based clinicians spend over half of their time documenting, hunting for supplies, and engaging in other nonproductive work," says Alan Ravitz, chair of the new program at Hopkins' Engineering for Professionals. "The answer lies in using a systems approach to ensure a holistic and seamless integration between technology, workflows, and culture."
Taught by instructors who are practicing systems engineers or health care professionals, the program's rigorous curriculum balances systems engineering theory and practice, enabling engineers and health care professionals to re-engineer health care delivery on a broad scale. Students develop concepts for possible solutions that seamlessly integrate technology into health care settings, addressing issues such as safety, affordability, security and privacy, performance, and healthcare outcomes.
Students in the new program will complete 18 credits in core courses addressing the fundamentals of health care system design, as well as 12 elective credits in areas ranging from the management of complex systems and human systems engineering to statistical methods in public health.
"We aim to educate a new generation of engineers and health care professionals that understand enough of the culture, terminology, and disciplines of both systems engineering and health care to lead the way in bringing about revolutionary transformation," Ravitz says.
Posted in Science+Technology
