Online Master of Digital Health: Course structure

In this subject you will gain an understanding of the growing technological trends, its related issues/problems, and strategies to tackle healthcare problems. It will help you compare and contrast technologies using standard frameworks. You will explore the role of digital health technologies and how they are applied in healthcare, public health and health promotion. You will also learn ethics and law in relation to digital health innovations, and research updates in digital health.

In this subject, you will explore the evolution of virtual care models by learning the “art and science” behind virtual care applications and keeping abreast with the latest developments in technologies (including devices from the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)) used for health delivery. You will learn about the ethical challenges that are faced in this space. You will also evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies and understand the need to provide evidence-based virtual care.

This subject will provides you with an understanding of the role of epidemiology and biostatistics in public health. You will be introduced to the main concepts and methods of epidemiology and biostatistics, sources of population data, and how these are applied to identify and address public health problems. You will be introduced to statistical software packages and learn how to use these to perform statistical analyses. You will learn how to interpret the results of key epidemiological and biostatistical tests.

In this subject, you will gain an understanding of what “big data” is, why it is important to the health and healthcare sectors, and how it can be used in real-world applications. You will investigate how data analytics can benefit healthcare delivery, and improve system efficiency and patient outcomes data collection. You will develop a working knowledge of the analytical techniques used to mine big data and visualise it. You will explore the requirements for data research infrastructure, review the current big data landscape (including assets, facilities, and services), and investigate the requirements around information privacy and security in relation to big data in digital health. Data linkage techniques and various strategies to tackle problems relating to data linkage quality will also be explored.

In this subject, you will develop the fundamental skills to communicate effectively in the digital age with internal and external stakeholders, such as healthcare professionals, administrative staff, government bodies, IT vendors, and patients, among others. You will explore different types of digital communication platforms including websites & social media to communicate with different healthcare audiences. You will also gain a deeper understanding of strategic digital communication planning for different types of digital health case studies and identified audiences.

In this subject you will consolidate digital health solution design & implementation knowledge and develop skills to apply your knowledge to relevant work contexts through the use of role-playing, case discussion, and observation. You will gain knowledge about problem analysis and solution design using co-design, human-centered and experience-based approaches. The subject will also provide foundational knowledge of solutions interoperability and change management. You will learn about implementation science in regard to behaviour change design and aspects of converting prototypes into reality.

In this subject, you will gain digital health strategic planning knowledge and see how this can be applied to relevant work contexts through the use of role-play, case discussion and observation. You will explore topics related to digital transformation in the context of healthcare sector. You will examine frameworks to assess organisational readiness and how to develop a systematic digital transformation roadmap. You will learn more about project and change management processes that can help foster and embrace digital change.

Whether dealing with public health issues or trying to improve the performance of a hospital, many of the issues are complex, seemingly embedded within a web of interconnected and often contested causes. Push on one part of the system and something changes to counter the good work. Complexity is often used as shorthand for intractability. In this subject we consider if systems thinking provides the insights needed to grapple with complexity. Systems thinking is interested in the parts of a system and the connections among those parts, the structures established as a result of those connections and the behaviours those structures allow or discourage. You will examine the notion of systems, as an object of study and a way of thinking that changes the way we might look at health problems and work towards their solution, the language of systems, and its concepts, and some of the methods used to define issues, build consensus for action, and evaluate strategies to address problems.