ISyE 4803 Healthcare Systems Engineering

Summer 2018 in GTL

Instructors: Turgay Ayer

Email:

Course Meeting Times: TBA

Prerequisite knowledge: ISyE 3770 Statistics and Applications (corequisite, can be taken simultaneously with ISyE 4803) or Math 3670 Probability and Statistics with Applications or AP Statistics, Math 1552 Integral Calculus (or similar),Math 1553 Intro Linear Algebra (or similar)

Flow Chart: BSIE: ISyE Concentration breadth elective, BSBME: one of the technical electives, BSID (Industrial Design) Concentration elective for one concentration and technical elective for others. Other engineering programs: free electives.

About the Course and Objectives: Healthcare is one of the largest and one of the most complex industries. Private organizations and Governments face severe challenges in delivering effective healthcare to their populations. Healthcare industry is facing a set of significant challenges on several fronts including ensuring access to care, enhancing quality of care, and containing costs. The course will begin by introducing the students to three dimensions of performance of a healthcare system: cost, quality, and access. The course will put a heavy emphasis on comparing various healthcare systems in developed countries. Tentative course topics will include comparison of various healthcare systems in developed countries, healthcare operations, Public Health and Economic Evaluation of Healthcare Interventions, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, Medical Decision Making, Healthcare IT, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Healthcare, and Healthcare Finance and Payment Models.

The course objectives are to supply students with the knowledge to identify, evaluate and mitigate health care delivery problems through the use of interactive lectures, case studies and real-world application projects. After completing this course, students should be able to:

1) identify the needs, requirements and limitations of a health care system;

2) evaluate health care systems;

3) perform basic health data analytics; and

4) model and improve health care system performance.

Textbook: Griffin PM, Nembhard HB, DeFlitch CJ (2016). Healthcare Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ.

Distribution of Information: There is an email list for this course, which will be used for general information, reminders, clarifications, and other purposes. OIT automatically adds each registered student to this list, provided that the student has an email address registered with the University. Make sure to check your email regularly at whatever address you have registered.

Acourse website is available on T-square ( You will need to log in with your GAtech ID and password. After this, you should see a list of courses to which you have access (in general, these will be courses for which you have registered or to which you have access for some other reason). Click on the homepage for this course. This homepage will be very important in the conduct of the course, as we will use it for posting assignments, their solutions, grades, and any other course related material.

Attendance: Attendance and participation are strictly required, and are very important to succeeding in this class. You are expected to participate and are responsible for assignments or policies that are announced in class or in material handed out in class, whether or not you are in class. You are also responsible for any material distributed electronically by email or via the Web.

Grading:Grades will be determined by the following three components as described.

  • Exams (65%) – There will be a midterm exam (30%) and a final exam (35%)
  • Homework & Quizzes(15%) – Short in-class quizzes will be given based past lectures and homework assignments.
  • Course Project(s) (20%) –There will be small group projects assigned over the semester. More information about the project(s) will be provided later.

In addition to graded homework, I will also assign homework not to be turned in for grading. It should be completed to do well in the course. Since these will not be graded, it is perfectly fine for you to work on these together; in fact, it is encouraged.