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For my Interdisciplinary experience I completed a minor in Information systems to complement my computer science major. I completed the minor program in the Fall of 2020. With this IS minor it has better provided me with more knowledge in the technical areas of health information, and given me a different perspective from outside my main field of study. I took classes specifically related to health informatics in order to form the connection to my challenge. Information systems is defined as the study of information and the set of networks that are used to organize and manage data. Health informatics is simply information engineering applied in the field of health care and information systems are the back bone of health informatics.
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This experience is related to my grand challenge (advance health informatics), because health informatics is all implemented through information systems. By studying more about information systems, I have not only improved my knowledge base in information systems, but in health care informatics as well. UMBC offered IS 460 Health Informatics I. I took that course to fully tie my other IS studies back into my grand challenge, however, most of the IS classes can be related to health informatics in some way since health informatics and information systems are so closely related.
This experience met the expectations for an interdisciplinary experience because it helped emphasize the interdisciplinary learning objectives. Health informatics is a very interdisciplinary field in and of itself, because there are the programmers who program the system, the system architects who design the system, and the health professionals who use the system. All these very different disciplines need to work together to solve this problem. By studying computer science as my major this information systems minor, I have attempted to bridge the gap between people who are programming the actual systems, and the people who design, and choose what kind of systems to implement. This experience has also allowed me to identify strategies to create common ground that I can use in the future while working with those form the IS/ Health Informatics disciplines. I will be completed multiple group projects with others from the IS discipline most significantly a research paper on factors accelerating Value Based health care (some of the results of that paper are shown with the images on this page).
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This experience contributed to two of the program wide learning objectives: perspectivism, and teamwork. For perspectivism, this experience allowed me to fairly consider other perspectives and concepts other than my own due to the interdisciplinary nature of my experience. For teamwork, a lot of the IS classes be completed many different group projects that require team work. This has allowed me to identify strengths and weaknesses on each of teams and taught home to empower other group members.
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Overall, through all of the course work that I went through, I feel like I have taken away valuable skills relating to finding common ground, and bridging gaps. I spent a lot of time on many different teams on many different group projects, and I feel very confident in my abilities to work on interdisciplinary teams in the future. I will take these skills that I have acquired confidently into the industry, and continue to capitalize on my interdisciplinary education.
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Level: Gold​
Level: Gold
Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem.
By completing a minor in a discipline that is not my focus of study, I have been able to work with many different people from a few different disciplines. This has allowed me to come up with common ground strategies, and bridging strategies. Advances in health informatics has only happened through the combination of a few different disciplines. These disciplines include computer science, information systems and medicine.
Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives.
Strategies for creating common ground included focusing on strengths and interests. While Information Systems, healthcare, and Computer Science have a lot of differences, they are all tied together by healthcare informatics. While I was working in Information Systems it was beneficial for me to capitalize on that connection.
Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines)
For all of these disciplines to work together to solve this challenge. A bridging strategy needed to be utilized. Fortunately, information systems and computer science are closely related so there isn’t much of a gap present. However, bridging the gap between healthcare and those sciences was more difficult. One strategy to do this was to focus on the end goals and making sure that priorities were aligned. As long as everyone had the same end goal and they kept it in sight , it was possible to close the gap.