Two hours of lecture per week. Law is one of a number of policies that mediates the tension between free flow and restrictions on the flow of information. This course introduces students to copyright and other forms of legal protection for databases, licensing of information, consumer protection, liability for insecure systems and defective information, privacy, and national and international information policy.
As information and information systems projects have become increasingly strategic, information workers at all levels and in all environments must demonstrate higher levels of professionalism, not only to perform their duties competently, but to remain competitive in the job market. This course, in conjunction with the School of Information final project, gives students insight into the source and best practice of professionalism, and gives students the chance to refine the essential skills in a simulated but realistic working environment.
Many graduate students in Law, Engineering and the Sciences will take a job in "industry" on leaving Berkeley. In addition, many students of Public Policy and in other Schools will interact with business people in their professional careers. Our goal is that by the end of the course, you'll feel comfortable talking with people whose graduate school work has been in Business. You'll understand the vocabulary, techniques of analysis and decision-making. Although Fundamentals of Business is a broad survey course, we understand that Berkeley graduate students are intellectually demanding and so we address some topics in depth. We also want to train you in the brief, clear writing style used in business.
An introduction to new information systems, such as the Internet and interactive television, and how they may be used to improve human health. The course has three objectives: first, to familiarize students with new information technologies; second, to review how these technologies will be used by public health professionals, consumers, health care providers, and others; and third, to study related ethical and legal issues such as privacy, access, and liability. The course is designed for people with minimal understanding of interactive technologies.
Observations of Daily Living
This project has three major deliverables. The first deliverable is a mobile application for new parents. The application will enable the easy capture of baby ODLs (Observations of Daily Living) such as eating and sleeping habits. These observations play an important role in the care of infants, especially those born early. ODLs, in conjunction with labs and other tests, can provide early warning signs for a host of medical conditions. They can also be used more generally to track the overall health of a baby.
The second deliverable is a web service that integrates the mobile app with Personal Health Records. We will first integrate with Google Health in the hopes of adding Microsoft Health Vault in the future. Our partnership with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) will allow us to close the loop and provide the ODL data directly to the physician in an electronic form. Our initial competitive analysis suggests that nobody else has been able to do this yet.
The third deliverable is a web application built on top of our web service that allows parents and/or physicians to access visualizations of the ODL data. This site will also facilitate the printing out of ODL data for providers whose Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) aren't integrated with Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault. The functionality of the web app has been scoped down for the project but future iterations could include patient networking (see PatientsLikeMe) and physician prescribed health plans (see Keas).
We've formed partnerships with LPCH, Google Health, and UCSF, and may try to collaborate with Project Health Design as well. These partnerships will play an important role, both by helping to inform the design of our application, and by eventually putting us in the hands of users.