Department of information sciences and biostatistics

Head of department

Viviane KOVESS

Partner organisations

The department has links with health professionals, universities and research centres involved in information systems in the health and biostatistics sector, for example:

Agence technique de l’information sur l’hospitalisation (ATIH – Technical hospitalisation information agency),
Institut des données de santé (IDS – Health Data Institute),
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM – National Health and Medical Research Institute),
Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques (DREES – Directorate for Research, Studies, Assessment and Statitics),
Agence des systèmes d’information partagés de santé (ASIP Santé),
la Direction de l’hospitalisation et de l’organisation des soins (DHOS – Directorate for Hospitalisation and the organisation of Healthcare),
Rennes 1 University,
Ecole nationale supérieure de la sécurité sociale (EN3S – National Higher Social Security School) within the framework of training for information systems for Agences Régionales de Santé (ARS -Regional Health Agencies).

This newly created department is currently discussing agreements for new joint research projects. Discussions are underway with the Société Française de Statistique (SFdS – French Statitistics Company), Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM – National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts), Paris V and Paris XIII universities and their statistics teams.

Strategic objectives

The department has 3 main lines of research:

information systems in the health sector,
data-mining,
biostatistical methods.

The department focuses on both education and research.
It aims to provide a high level of training for public health professionals (doctors, inspectors, hospital directors and engineers) within university masters and engineering courses.

Its research aims are:

to undertake applied research related to health databases including the recording of data and the use of these databases,
to develop sophisticated biostatistical analysis tools better able to resolve public health problems.

In the long-term, this new department aims to provide a methodological platform for many health, welfare and environmental databases, etc, providing the biostatistical analysis tools to exploit the databases.

Courses

Information systems in the health sector

The core of the tuition provided by the InfoBioStat department is the EHESP’s “Expert PMSI” diploma. This diploma has 9 modules designed for those involved in the Programme de Médicalisation des Systèmes d’Information (PMSI – Information system medicalisation programme) (doctors, directors and managers of hospitalisation structures, research scientists using PMSI databases, etc.). This course requires 196 hours attendance, e-learning and extra-curricular work and counts for 14 ECTS and 2 UE.
One of the basic features of this diploma is the module for studying geographic information systems applied to the world of health.
The department provides degree courses in information systems for all branches (public health inspectors, hospital directors, directors of care establishments, hospital engineers, health and welfare inspectors, etc).
In collaboration with the Rennes 1 University faculty of law and political science, the InfoBioStat department is responsible for the “Ethics and information systems” module of the Law, health and ethics Master.
Within the framework of the Réseau des Écoles de Service Public (RESP – Network of public service schools) the department is also responsible for a course on “Information systems and data protection”.

Biostatistics

The department organises biostatistics modules for degree courses, particularly for public health inspectors, national education doctors, occupational doctors and health engineers.
The department is involved in providing tuition for health engineering diplomas.
Since the start of the 2008 academic year, the department has played a prominent role in courses for the M1 and M2 years of the Information Science and Biostatistics part of the EHESP’s Master of Public Health (MPH).
The department is currently working on setting up a biostatistics core that could be available for professional development courses by the start of the next intake and available for several departments within the EHESP.

Research

Under the direction of Dr Jean-François Philippon

One of the current lines of research for information systems is setting up indicators of avoidable hospitilisation, on the basis of the national PMSI databases.
Two field projects are currently underway, in the Ile de France and Champagne-Ardenne areas, studying this problem in collaboration with the Department of human and social sciences and health behaviour.
Still in collaboration with the Department of human and social sciences and health behaviour, the InfoBioStat department is involved in the European EURO-DRG research programme on the analysis of costs of hospital treatment (Analysis of PMSI databases and data from the Etude Nationale des Coûts (National Costs Survey).
Another line of research is automatically processing data in the PMSI. This project is based on semantic search and constrained programming.

Under the direction of Dr Séverine Deguen

A second line of research is developing small-scale spatial analysis tools to study inequalities within France. This research project is also an important part of the research of the EHESP’s “Environmental health and health at work department” as this equit’Area project is aimed in particular at exploring the role of environmental exposure in social health inequalities.

As part of this project, we are developing geographic analysis methods to study inequalities at the smallest scale for which INSEE provides socio-economic data for the French population. Scientific papers and oral communications are already available for this project.

Contacts

Catherine GIRARD – Catherine.Girard@ehesp.fr – Tel : +33 (0) 2 99 02 25 36