Prof. Jim Warren, Chair in Health Informatics

Note that I will be on Research & Study Leave (R&SL, commonly called "sabbatical") for all of calendar year 2012 and will not be performing my normal teaching and administrative duties. If you email me, please use a clear subject line and please understand that my response may be delayed.

My position is joint between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Population Health. My office is on the 3rd floor of the School of Population Health building (building 730, room 357) at the Tamaki Campus in suburban Auckland.

I'm Chief Scientist for the National Institute for Health Innovation (NIHI)*. NIHI's mission is to create, evaluate and promote innovative health information technology that improves health outcomes and reduces inequalities in healthcare delivery. My group has created a forum, the Health Innovation Exchange or hive - have a look, sign up, post your thoughts.

     Jim Warren

* Note that from late 2010 we are moving to calling my unit "NIHI - Informatics" and we are bringing a much broader set of academic capabilities - including health systems, quality improvement and evaluation - under the NIHI banner (after all, the latter 'I' is for Innovation, and that's more than Informatics).

Health Informatics at The University of Auckland. I'm programme director for the Postgraduate Diploma in Health Sciences in Health Informatics, which can extend to a Master of Health Sciences. There is also the option to stop with a Postgraduate Certificate in Health Sciences (Health Informatics). In the postgraduate programme I teach HLTHINFO 728 Principles of Health Informatics and HLTHINFO 730 Healthcare Decision Support Systems. Note that Honours and Postgraduate Diploma students in Computer Science and Software Engineering can get permission to take select Health Informatics postgraduate courses. I'm also available to supervise research students from either Health or Computing backgrounds (and those with mixed backgrounds are most especially welcome!). We also have a third year elective in Health Informatics for students in the Bachelor of Health Sciences.

Since most of the detail about HLTHINFO 730 Healthcare Decision Support Systems is hidden behind the wall of Cecil, I've put a copy of some key files from the semester 1 2009 offering here for your information. We're next running the course in semester 2, 2013, and I'm very interested to have a mix of both technical and clinical students enrolled.

From 2010 we're offering our core Health Informatics courses in fully online flexible delivery mode. This means you can start the Postgraduate Diploma in Health Sciences (Health Informatics) from overseas, and can do the entire Postgraduate Certificate in Health Sciences (Health Informatics) without ever coming to New Zealand (if you wish).

The courses to be delivered online in 2012 are:

We'll be back to a fuller online offering when I return in 2013. For 2012, contact Dr Karen Day for further information.

Note that while we are doing online (aka, 'distance') delivery, local students are still very welcome to enrol and enjoy the modern and convenient learning format.

The fee for international students is about NZ$4000 per course; for domestic students and NZ citizens (home or abroad), the fee for most of the courses is about NZ$800. Contact Mrs Kashmira Irani for information on the application process.

I'm proud of the fact that the course is practical in orientation. Our students are very diverse, and many of our them are already working in the industry (in health delivery, health IT support, health software development or the research sector). We create an environment where the students learn from each other in addition to taking in "the syllabus" per se. We also reinforce this with a lot of guest speakers. The idea is to help our students be more effective agents in the complex enterprise of improving healthcare delivery. We look at the gamut of applications spanning community based care, hospital systems, public health, governance and, to an ever-increase degree [probably my favourite area], consumer health informatics. We also prepare students for higher studies if they want to go onto masters or PhD research in the area. See some testimonials from our graduates.

Research

My research goal is to achieve measurable improvements in health outcomes through innovation in health information technology.

My research is focused on three (sometimes inter-related) aspects of innovative use of IT for chronic disease management:

Some of my most active research at present is in analysis of electronic prescribing (particularly for long-term adherence to blood pressure lowering medications - see pubs with done in the PhD work of Thusitha Mabotuwana); analysis of electronic discharge summaries; and meta-data coding of consumer health Web pages. I've also been doing quite a lot of commissioned research for the Ministry of Health on directions in health IT and evaluation of pilot and innovative health IT deployments here in New Zealand.

I'm always interested in good students for project, dissertation and thesis work that relates to this research agenda. Probably best to contact me directly about current topics that are on-the-go. If you do wish to contact me about research study, address your email to "Prof Warren" or "Jim" - I'll delete anything to a generic "Dear Sir" - and explain to me what specific preparation you've had and just what sort of Health Informatics research you're keen to do.

Some of my current PhD students:

Congratulations to my recently graduated PhD students!

Some of my past PhD students:

Other Roles and Responsibilities

Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ). I was Chair of HINZ for 2008-2010. I was Scientific Program Committee Chair for the HINZ Conference and Exhibition 2006, 2007 and 2008. Consider submitting a paper to the HINZ 2011 Conference or to the HINZ journal, Healthcare and Informatics Review Online. Also note that HINZ has study awards to support students and travel awards to support professionals.

Australian College for Health Informatics (AHCI). I'm a Foundation Fellow of, and was the Membership Chair from 2005-2010 for, ACHI - Australia's peak professional body for health informatics. ACHI has widened its scope to include New Zealand (this was approved in late 2009 - so all you Kiwi Health Informatics Heroes should think about applying for Member or Fellow status in ACHI!)

Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge Management (HIKM) at Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW). I have co-Chaired this workshop on a couple of ocassions. Hope to see you at the next one (Melbourne in early 2012).

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I have co-lectured and been course coordinator for COMPSCI345/SOFTENG350 - our stage 3 course in HCI. It's always great to work with students who've learned a great deal about writing software to address the question of how to write software that will help people to do their job well. I'm NOT scheduled to be teaching this course in 2011 or 2012. Contact Assoc Prof Robert Amor for details.

My Career

I took up the Chair in Health Informatics at the University of Auckland in November 2005. I made the move here because the environment provides the opportunity to really make a difference - what, with a world class medical school, excellent computer science department, active local health IT industry and a proactive Ministry of Health! The School of Population Health, wherein my office and my Institute are located, provides a particularly stimulating and helpful setting combining General Practice, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the Clinical Trials Research Unit, Health Systems, Maori and Pacific Health, and Social and Community Health, as well as onsite clinics.

I worked for the University of South Australia from 1993 to 2005, and you'll still find the Web page for the Health Informatics Laboratory that I founded there (now directed by my good colleague, Dr Jan Stanek).

I did my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and PhD in Information Systems at the University of Maryland's UMBC campus. I was awarded my PhD in mid 1992 with a dissertation (which they'd call it a 'thesis' in this part of the world) in Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) / Simulation Systems... basically I was looking at interactive decision support technology.

Publications

See a list of my publicatons.

Contact details

Last updated: J. Warren, 2-Nov-2011.