Virtual Open House MS in Health Informatics and Graduate Certificate Transcript

George Mason Online Admissions: Well, welcome everyone. My name is Casey. I’m an admissions advisor on behalf of George Mason University, and this is our fall. 2024 virtual open house

George Mason Online Admissions: for the Masters of Science in Health informatics.

George Mason Online Admissions: So again, welcome everyone.

George Mason Online Admissions: This is our agenda. Today, as as I mentioned, we’ll be u utilizing the chat function for any questions. And those you can write in questions. As the slides go on but we’ll save all the questions for the end.

George Mason Online Admissions: Alrighty!

George Mason Online Admissions: And again chat functions

George Mason Online Admissions: so alrighty.

George Mason Online Admissions: and Dr. Boytishk, take it over.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Alright. So I again as well to check. And I’m Professor of Health Informatics Funding and Director of our Health Informatics program

Janusz Wojtusiak: in my in my current role. I oversee pretty much everything in our program. MoD, undergraduate program. Our bachelor of science in health informatics, masters in health informatics that we’ll be talking about today and our Pg concentration the other. Me that you see there is a second person, you know, logging with the same login. That’s actually Doctor Abdul Hafez.

Janusz Wojtusiak: and he is the Coordinator for the Masters of Science and Health Informatics program. He’s actually new faculty that joined our program very recently. So still learning how to do things. And you know, but it’s very likely that once you join the program he’ll be working with you and advising and lots of other things. And of course, I’m always there to step in

Janusz Wojtusiak: just to give you a little background. I am computer scientists by training. And you know, I moved to healthcare area many, many years ago. By thinking, you know, I can use my fancy tools to analyze some of the good looking healthcare data, and you know, it took me a couple of decades to really understand that I really don’t know what healthcare is about

Janusz Wojtusiak: and I’m still trying. So it’s a very complicated area. And you know, I hope that you’ll actually appreciate the things that we can teach you in the program.

Janusz Wojtusiak: All right.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So our program is Kim accredited. Kim is commission of accreditation, of health informatics and information that has been programs which is essentially the professional accreditation body that accredits health informatics programs. When we got accredited where, I believe, 13 program to be accredited across the Us. There are 20 something accredited programs right now. But you know, our program goes back for a while.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Italy. Originally the program has been create masters. Program has been created, you know, in the mid 2 thousands, about 2,005 or so as a concentration under Mha. And then about 2,010. It’s been of us a Sep separate master of science in health informatics. So it’s one of the longer existing programs in the area. And Kai Kima credited as actually

Janusz Wojtusiak: I believe it’s one of the better ones.

Janusz Wojtusiak: We have a very good curriculum, extremely good faculty.

Janusz Wojtusiak: we have. This is information session about online program. What is really important. And that’s also important from taking accreditation perspective. Is that what we teach you in online classes is pretty much identical to which we teach on the ground students accreditation requires us the content for the courses to be the same. So

Janusz Wojtusiak: The you know, the format is different. The courses are offered in condensed format. Few other things are different, but the content. What we teach you, what our requirements are essentially the same for all our students doesn’t matter. This is online or actually in person.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And the program can be completed in about 2 years.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Let’s take a look at the curriculum. The idea of the curriculum is that you have to take required courses.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And first, 5 of those courses you’d take

Janusz Wojtusiak: essentially in that order in which they’re listed. Once you are into the program.

Janusz Wojtusiak: our program is part of college of public health, and as such, every student in the college is required to take a course in public health.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Thus you need to take foundations of public health after we should transition to computational tools in health informatics. This is course I created

Janusz Wojtusiak: a while ago and actually revised very recently.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And it has essentially 2 components. It will give you a crash course on python and programming, but will also teach you everything that you know. People who work in it space know and understand. And you need to at least have some ideas about them about those computational tools. So you can have any cool conversations with them. Then you transition to introduction to health informatics, healthcare databases, which is another technical course.

Janusz Wojtusiak: pretty heavy on SQL. Programming and requiring databases. If you you essentially can’t analyze data if you cannot query a database. And this is what they

Janusz Wojtusiak: you know. The course is about data, vocabulary and standards everything about, you know. Icd codes Cpt codes, kicks, codes, umls, different coding systems specifically from the perspective of how data organized.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Then you’ll actually switch to the concentration. But before I talk about the concentration. Let me talk a little bit about the workshop, pre capstone, and capstone at the end.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Capstone at the very end. The idea is that you go somewhere. You work on a project and you report on the results of that project. It’s not exactly like undergrad internship, and if you go somewhere, and you know you do something, and maybe it’s useful. Maybe not. Capstones are project specific. You go there. You

Janusz Wojtusiak: work on a specific project that is agreed between Mason and the organization you go to, and you have to report those results. In order to prepare you for the this

Janusz Wojtusiak: capstone. You need to do a pre capstone and pre capstone. It’s actually when, if you look at the catalog, it’s a 0 credit course. So it seems like there isn’t much there. But there, actually, it’s a lot of content in that course, it’s not educational content, which is why you’re not getting any credit, but the whole idea is to prepare you for that capstone.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So, and it actually starts early. What you’ll see is that the faculty who teaches capstan will reach out to you, most likely in your second semester very early on in the program, and really give you a checklist to what you need to do before you start the capstone. Obviously, you need to find organization in which you do it.

Janusz Wojtusiak: You need to prepare your Cv, you need to go through background checks. You need to go to different types of human subject trainings. You need to sign all the details, agreements, all the other things. There is a long, long list of things that you actually need to do to be able to actually step on the doors of that organization where you do your caps them at the moment when it actually starts. And that process actually takes time, especially finding right place to do your capstone. So we’d like you to start very, very early.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Before that comes what we call the workshop in health informatics and the workshop. It’s something that is brand new. It will be actually offered for the very first time this fall, and the idea is that somewhere from outside, from the industry, somebody comes in to

Janusz Wojtusiak: Mason with a problem to solve.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And that problem to solve is given to all the students who are taking the workshop class at the same time. So everybody in your class will be working on the same problem. So either as a one big team or as a certain competing groups.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And because we have students from different concentrations, we have some students from informatics management concentration. We have some students from data, analytics, concentration. You have different skill sets. And as a team, you really can solve the problem and the faculties role is to provide you mentorships or consulting how to actually solve that problem. But it is the team that will be actually working on it on it and providing the solution to where the problem actually originated.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Hold right?

Janusz Wojtusiak: And then it’s our concentrations. I already mentioned 2 concentrations healthy, healthy informatics, management concentration. It’s about the soft skills it’s about. There is some statistics, and there are some other things. But, more importantly, there are things about project management. There are things about healthcare security policy which mostly hipaa and similar regulations, but it also includes some technical

Janusz Wojtusiak: content. It has legal issues. It has other courses. Some of those courses are actually shared with our Mha student.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So it’s really about

Janusz Wojtusiak: training you to bridge the gap between the technology world and the clinical or healthy world in which you can operate in both and actually have a meaningful conversation on both on both sides.

Janusz Wojtusiak: health data, analytics, concentration. It’s really a data science and health program. It is about

Janusz Wojtusiak: taking data. And it could be Ehr data, clinical data. It could be medical claims, data. It could be registries, data. It could be something else, some health data and being able to process that data and do some modeling either statistical modeling or apply some machine learning tools or apply something more advanced to be able to do something with that data. So that’s essentially data Science in Health program which is embedded in that concentration.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Alright.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Sue.

Janusz Wojtusiak: I it’s been actually a couple of years when when I did it. But I went to my Linkedin account, and I pulled. You know, list of, you know, job titles for graduates from our students. And I ended up with, you know, 100 something different job titles. And the reason is that very few jobs actually say health informatics.

Janusz Wojtusiak: You’ll see everything from people working for it. Vendors consulting companies hospitals, insurance companies, and other places. And so it’s a pre health informatics. A broad area many of you will will be coming from

Janusz Wojtusiak: you know.

Janusz Wojtusiak: health related background. And you know, once you’re a clinician, you’ll always be clinician. But you know, you can learn this technology piece. And we actually have lots of nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and other clinicians that actually go to a program. If your background is in it, you’ll always be, you know, computer scientists or or have it background. But you need to learn that health component as as on top of it. So it’s a broad field. And but once you start looking at descriptions of what

Janusz Wojtusiak: our graduates do, what jobs they do. Not necessarily job titles, you’ll see very good alignment with what we actually teach in the program.

Janusz Wojtusiak: All right.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So process one to take that.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, I am an admissions advisor here, George Mason, and we work with the graduate students. During the application process.

George Mason Online Admissions: So we will be able to kind of be like your final draft, in a sense. So looking over everything, making sure that nothing is missing and everything is included. So those things that need to be included we do like to see students have their bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution. And we do like to see a minimum of a 3 point O Gpa.

George Mason Online Admissions: we will also ask for your transcripts. We do accept unofficial transcripts for a decision. So you can submit your application with unofficial transcripts. So transcripts that are not physically sealed, or may have been sealed, and then have opened those transcripts. Now, which would be then considered unofficial. We do try to request students official transcripts for them as well. We try to do that.

George Mason Online Admissions: We will ask for your resume.

George Mason Online Admissions: We do ask for 2 recommendations as well, and we do have a questionnaire format

George Mason Online Admissions: besides, just the letter traditional letter of recommendation.

George Mason Online Admissions: And then, lastly, we will ask for a statement of per purpose or a personal statement essay, as some call it. The essay is about 750 words about but basically what we’ll ask for and I’ll we will have those exact instructions on the application. But basically asking about career objectives, what you’re looking for in a program and things like that. And as I mentioned. You get in touch with one of our advisors here, and we would be happy to help you throughout the application process.

George Mason Online Admissions: Our fall term starts August 20, sixth which is coming up, and the deadline for applications are due. By August first we work in A on a rolling admissions. Here George Mason. So the sooner that you apply, the sooner you can get a decision prior to that august first deadline.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Let me add a couple of comments here.

George Mason Online Admissions: Sure.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So for letters of recommendations, you know. It’s nice to have at least one academic one, you know. Some of you may be out of school for quite a while, and it’s just not feasible to get them. Then to professional recommendations are fine. It’s not fine to get recommendation for your mom. And actually

Janusz Wojtusiak: so you know it. This should be academic or professional recommendations for the statement of purpose. We actually read them.

Janusz Wojtusiak: you know in the Admissions Committee, and this is the place where you really try to convince the committee. That is the right program for you. So take it seriously. Don’t use Chub Gpt to completely generate the thing if they check it for you, you know. But you know it’s it’s it’s try to actually write it. And what do you really think? And why you want to do the program? And that’s actually especially important for people who are coming with completely different backgrounds. We really need to understand that you know

Janusz Wojtusiak: what you’re getting yourself into. You understand what health informatics is, and you know how you how you see yourself in in that field.

Janusz Wojtusiak: and the that that goal statement is the place where you can actually explain it. And you know, we we spent, you know, quite often it is, you know, what’s actually written in that goal statement really makes the decision on who’s actually admitted to the program, and who’s not

Janusz Wojtusiak: awesome.

George Mason Online Admissions: Alrighty, and then we’ll do some questions. So I know there was already couple of questions coming in, but everyone please go ahead and utilize the chat for any questions that you have so.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Hey? So we have couple of questions. First is, you know, somebody from with Mph. Degree can, if you transfer to be transferred like foundations of public health. The short answers is most likely. Yes.

Janusz Wojtusiak: I believe the rule is that it would give to be Mph. From sip accredited program. So not all Mph programs are self accredited. If this is a safe accredited program, we can definitely transfer in

Janusz Wojtusiak: actually wave the foundations course, if it’s not set accredited program. We’ll actually need to check with our Dean for academic affairs. So I believe Purdue is actually self accredited. So it should be actually fine. So what we’ll, what we’ll most likely do is we’ll just wave gchon from your requirements.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So yeah, that won’t be a problem.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah, 12 credits are allowed. To transfer in.

Janusz Wojtusiak: So, for you know the 2 courses you if you look at the list of courses you know that I talked about before 2 of the 2 first of the courses are, you know, what we call potentially waiveable courses. And the first one is actually gch 500. The foundations of public health, and for somebody who comes with background in public health.

Janusz Wojtusiak: But you know, because we are College of Public Health, there is this requirement of self accreditation? For you know, if if we transfer in that course or waived, of course, and the second is computational tools in hoping formatics. Hub. 6, 18. That also can be waived. For students who come with strong technical background. Usually that means that somebody, you know, has a degree in computer science or degree in it.

Janusz Wojtusiak: You know, we once in a while, you know, we have somebody who, you know, had

Janusz Wojtusiak: took a course, on coursera, on, you know, python programming. That’s not enough. We actually ask you. And you know, we actually have, you know,

Janusz Wojtusiak: uncertain to becoming somebody with with, you know, medical degree. The

Janusz Wojtusiak: you know we would do the medical degree with, you know, other non. It related degree. We have something which is called a bridge course, and that bridge course, it’s free online set

Janusz Wojtusiak: collection of

Janusz Wojtusiak: resources that we very strongly recommend. You actually go through in order to prepare you for the classes.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Right? So once you end up in Hub 6, 18. Technically, the way the course is built, we start from 0, and we teach you. You know how to write color world program in Python. And you know it’s it’s it’s it assumes 0 knowledge. However, if you really

Janusz Wojtusiak: have not seen programming before. You may get lost in week, 2 or 3,

Janusz Wojtusiak: because the phone will actually go very fast through that content. So we very highly recommend that you actually complete the bridge course. And what that will do is essentially, you know, point you out to some online courses resources. So you at least see python before

Janusz Wojtusiak: the same with SQL. And databases. So you know, you see SQL. Before, because that really will make your life easier once you get to. You know the database course in your second semester hubs 6 71 because the faculty goes actually,

Janusz Wojtusiak: you know, goes very fast. The bridge course is available pretty much the moment you’re actually admitted and activate your Mason email. So it is built in our learning management system. So we actually, there is physically no way to grant access before you have your Mason login so once you’re admitted to the program. And you know, you get your, you activate your Mason email. We can immediately grant you access today to the to the bridge course.

Janusz Wojtusiak: You know, if you want. If you’d like to start doing something a little before then you send me an email, and you know what what we can do is, you know, I can point you to a couple of courses, you know, like, you know, before you do the bridge. Course, you know. Do this thinking, of course, error right, or do something else. And you know this way, you know, you can start pretty much immediate to looking up some of those resources.

Janusz Wojtusiak: and you know that that will just make your life easier. And again they’re not per say required. But we know that students who did not complete the bridge course can get lost very quickly in the in the course of work. That will be very fast.

Janusz Wojtusiak: For foreign Broadway. Do you wanna answer that? Or should I talk?

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah. Yeah. So for requirements for foreign graduates. We do have international requirements. So depending on where? Your degree was from depending the country. We may need a language proficiency exam. We do accept duolingo ielts and then, we would need your transcripts to be evaluated usually by a nasis

George Mason Online Admissions: member. But or we do kind of see a lot of students using Wes, which is a world education service. Where they will get their transcripts evaluated. So those are really the only requirements. That are needed.

Abdul: There are Yanush, and there are more questions from students in Qa and a sections.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Dinner.

Janusz Wojtusiak: hey?

George Mason Online Admissions: Let’s look at that.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Okay, what are the prerequisites? Do I have? Though I don’t have background in it. The answer is, no, you don’t need background in it. But we’ll ask you to the bridge. Course. It it’s it is. It is actually good idea

Janusz Wojtusiak: to, you know. Start looking on your own literally go to. You know there is for several Linkedin learning, you know, Edx, you know, one of those sites, and, you know, just start learning python and start learning SQL. And to do some refresh on math because those you’ll need those skills.

Janusz Wojtusiak: It’s it’s you know, so there’s no formal requirement. But you know we’d like to see something.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And then in your goal statement, you’ll just write that, you know you completed, you know that course somewhere free course. And you know that gives, you know, the committee more arguments to you know. Say that. You’re taking this thing actually, seriously. And you know, you started actually learning before you get admitted to the program to catch up with those things. So no, no hard prequisites. But you know we’d like to see those things.

George Mason Online Admissions: Just just to add on that really quickly there is actually a requirement on the application for an experience statement. In that section you would be able to write what previous?

George Mason Online Admissions: You know, history you have in in it, or

George Mason Online Admissions: programming languages.

Janusz Wojtusiak: If you don’t have

Janusz Wojtusiak: 3 point O. Gpa, well, you can apply. We can’t guarantee that you’ll get admitted. You know it. It really depends on many things. You know, if it’s slightly below 3 it’s

Janusz Wojtusiak: probably possible.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And what usually happens is that we’ll need to, you know. Write some special justifications. And you know, there, there’s some per paper paperwork that the Admissions Committee need to do. But that also means that that application need to be like super, strong on everything else, and by super strong mean, you know, show us much of that extra experience and other things from before. So you know, or or maybe you know, that 3 point O Gpa, it’s many, many years old, and you know somebody had to no longer

Janusz Wojtusiak: in in in health. It so it’s it’s not impossible, right? It’s just something that you know. The application would need to be very strong on pretty much everything else.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And

Janusz Wojtusiak: okay, our class is flexible in our lectures and assignments due during a specific time.

Janusz Wojtusiak: to answer that. In short, you do it in a weekly modules.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Every instructor. It’s slightly different. And you know we try to structure all the courses in a way that you have a weekly block, and pretty much, you know. If you want to do it on on the weekend, you know it’s your weekend. If you want to do it on on Wednesday evening. It’s Wednesday evening, and so on. So usually you’re supposed to respond those weekly blocks, and if I go to would expect at the end of the week, you know, completed assignment. So that gives you some flexibility.

Janusz Wojtusiak: What we typically do, especially for technical courses. I personally believe that for teaching technical stuff, the face to face time, it’s actually with the instructor. It’s really important. So for most of the courses there there.

Janusz Wojtusiak: We call them office hours, but they’re essentially voluntary meetings in which faculty will be available to answer your questions. We don’t exactly use it to teach or to lecture. Because you know all the lectures and all the content is actually recorded. But it’s actually good time in which faculty can provide you provide you feedback to what you’re doing. And quite often, you know, when I work to students on those office hours, you know, somebody will connect, you know, share their screen.

Janusz Wojtusiak: And hey, this is the problem. This is the place where actually, I’m stuck coding some stuff. And we can go through the code. We can go through lots of other things, and so on. So there are. There is some synchronous time. It’s not required synchronous time, but you know it’s it’s it’s highly recommended for students, because it just makes the life easier. Everything else will be due in weekly blocks, with usually a big deliverable at the end of the semester almost every class will have semester long

Janusz Wojtusiak: project, and that semester long project is to deliver in the last week of classes.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Most courses will also have a final exam and some other things, and they have to be taken within some specific time period.

Abdul: Th. There is one more question regarding I I it’s iel ts, the person is asking, does it need to be resend one? Because I think there is a 2 year limit on, ie. Lts.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yes, I believe it needs to be recent. I can see.

George Mason Online Admissions: Can’t be more than 2 years old.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yes, so Camp, more than 2 years old.

George Mason Online Admissions: and that goes for all language proficiency. Exam. So toe full Duolingo ieltts, I, Ela peers and academic tests

George Mason Online Admissions: no more than 2 years old.

Abdul: Did. There’s a follow up question students asking regarding experience statement. Because you, we already mentioned from panelists that then statement could be any experience in it. Background. Follow up question.

Abdul: Oh, never mind, it’s us answering. Nope.

Abdul: my button.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Ye okay? So can I. Co access courses everywhere. If I go overseas? This short answer is, yes, I mean, if you go to Iran, Cuba or North Korea. You may have problems to access university computers. But everywhere else it actually does work. And to know, we have actually students from overseas, taking classes.

George Mason Online Admissions: Any other questions.

George Mason Online Admissions: All good questions today. In this QR code, you can scan to apply for our upcoming fall term. We do have a spring term open as well, but falls our next upcoming term. You can reach out to us

George Mason Online Admissions: at online, [email protected], I’m going to put my personal contact information in the chat. If you guys have any questions about the application process, please feel free to email me anytime.

George Mason Online Admissions: I’m here to help.

George Mason Online Admissions: Alrighty. I think that

George Mason Online Admissions: that’s it. On the questions.

George Mason Online Admissions: Well, thank you. Everyone for joining today. Thank you. Dr. Voite to shack and professor. Thank you. The second voic to shack for joining in today we do appreciate your time and thank you everyone for coming in and asking great questions today.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Thank you.

Abdul: Thanks.

Abdul: Yeah.

Janusz Wojtusiak: There was actually one

Janusz Wojtusiak: other quick question to you.

Janusz Wojtusiak: It just showed up in the last mode.

George Mason Online Admissions: You don’t need both recommendation letter or questionnaire. So questionnaire on the application. You will only need to put down your recommendations email, address and name.

George Mason Online Admissions: Once you save that section, it will automatically send out an email from George Mason with a link to a questionnaire questionnaire is about 5 questions really should only take them 1015 min to complete

George Mason Online Admissions: once they complete that, it’s automatically marked as received under application. But if they would like to include a letter of recommendation. They absolutely can. But it’s not required to have both.

George Mason Online Admissions: Great question.

Janusz Wojtusiak: Alright. I see no more questions.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah.

George Mason Online Admissions: like awesome

George Mason Online Admissions: grief.

George Mason Online Admissions: Alrighty. Well, thank you guys again for joining I think the recording will be available.

George Mason Online Admissions: Within the week. I think Sarah will probably set that up.

George Mason Online Admissions: Get me.