Week of 08/24/09 in BMI 502

Content:
Some of the topics covered in the first class were uses of computers in medicine, problems that can occur in research, and how to create a student website on the asu site.  A few of the subjects covered in the computers in medicine subject were data and text mining, social networks, computer-aided medical diagnoses, and managing medical information with computers.  Some of the problems that can occur in research are lacking objectivity in proficency measures and preformance mesures, trouble with adapting to technologies, and having a lack of test subjects.  The student research projects were also covered in the class.

The second class was on databases including Entity-Attibute-Modeling (EAV) and conventional relational databases.  EAV uses only 3 columns.  Conventional relational databases can have a variety of column numbers.  Conventional relational databases can leave a lot of empty data spots.  EAV can leave less empty data spots than conventional relational databases.  How logical and physical structures can be different in databases was taught.  EAV databases can offer more flexability with schema evolutions than conventional relational databases.  The presentation also instructed that a variety of the attributes of each database type should be looked at when someone is choosing a database type to use.

In the first class, I found that a lot of interesting points were covered about computers in medicine.  I liked getting to think about the large number of ways that computers can assist with medical treatments.  I thought about how it is quite a challenge to make computer interfaces intuative to use and powerful in their ability to retrieve relevant information for treatments.  The information in the second class makes me concider that I will try to think about what the data in a database will look like before deciding on a database type to use.  I will also try to remember that while EAVs can avoid empty data spots, sometimes those empty data spots can be important.  The information about databases on the blog can help me to learn more about them and I appreciate that it was posted.

I would recommend MySQL for anyone who wants to learn more about databases.  http://www.mysql.com/ .  MySQL is a program for building and mantaining databases that is able to integrate into a lot of programming languages.  MySQL is open source database software so users can use it for free and donate to it if they want.  Some useful online books on MySQL are availible through our access to SAFARI in our online ASU library cataloges in the research databases section.

Posted by:  Nate