Computerized Clinical Decision Support Systems in Healthcare: Pros, Cons & Liabilities
Research Paper Guidelines:
The implementation of the final project will be in the format of review article: You will write a review type
research paper that covers a specific area or topic in health information technologies. An example for the
research paper is to write a review paper on the topic of automated transcription system and its applications
in health care.
The project is structured in three consecutive phases.
¢ Project proposal. The proposal is a short (< 200 words) description of your project plan. It should
state what problem you will work on, why you want to work on the problem, how you plan to accomplish it, and
what the expected results will be. You won’t be judged on your proposal; it is there to help you to get
started. I’ll give you written feedback about your proposal. If I found there is any obvious problems in the
proposal may prevent you from finishing the project, I will meet and talk with you. You can send in the
proposal through the Final Project module on the blackboard server.
¢ Project paper: The report of your research should be a comprehensive overview of a specific topic in
health information technologies. Your paper should include a brief description of the topic/project, the
literature search strategies, the findings from the acquired literature and your conclusions. The length of
the final paper is at least 10 pages.
Your project grade will be based on the quality of your paper. Feel free to contact me to discuss the papers
related to your final project.
Doing a good project is a daunting task. The most successful projects tend to be very well defined and modest
in scope. I am very happy to be involved in all stages of your project. Please, come talk to me or email me
about your project ideas, how you should execute the project, what you should write about in your final
paper, etc. Make sure you save enough time to write a good paper, since that’s what will determine your
grade!
Suggestions for projects
You should feel free to propose any project you like, as long as it is related to health information
technology and have a substantial amount of synthesis of information.
1. Introduce the problem and the externally imposed constraints, and explain why the topic is interesting.
2. State the goals of your paper clearly.
3. Briefly describe your search strategy and selection of references.
4. Report the results of your project. You should describe your findings from the literature according to the
goals.
5. Conclude with a review of lessons learned from your work, and the value of your work.
6. Cite your sources as you mention them in the text of your paper, and list all references at the end of the
paper. I am looking for more than ten references for research project. Please note at least half of your
references need to be from an academic bibliographic resource. You cannot have all references from the Web.
You can use any citation style you feel comfortable.
Write for an audience that understands basic health information technology and has a fair amount of
experience applying them in various situations, but has not thought carefully about the particular problem
you are dealing with.
How will I (and your fellow students) evaluate your paper?
When evaluating your paper, we will look at both content and writing.
Some content considerations:
¢ Do you provide motivation for why the problem you chose is worthwhile or interesting?
¢ Does your solution aIDress the goals you stated?
¢ Does your search strategies appropriate for the topic?
¢ Do you explain your decisions and the trade-offs?
¢ How sound is your methods? Do your methods solve the problem?
¢ Are your findings clear?
¢ Is your conclusion clear?
Some writing considerations:
¢ Is the report easy to understand?
¢ Is it well organized and coherent?
¢ Does it use diagrams or tables where appropriate? Is there a caption with the diagrams or tables?
¢ Is there a good abstract and bibliography?
