AI AND HEALTH - 2025/6

Module Overview

The module provides an application-focused tour of machine learning for real-world healthcare research and application from understanding various healthcare components, ethical concerns to pre-processing and analysing healthcare data for classification, survival and risk analysis, and early prediction tasks.

The module requires and builds on the knowledge of basic machine learning, linear algebra, and familiarity with Python programming.  

Labs are designed to support understanding of the theory and enable development of practical skills required for future employability.

Module provider

Computer Science and Electronic Eng

Module Leader

KOUCHAKI Samaneh (CS & EE)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

The module first introduces healthcare components and various sources of healthcare data. It then discusses the ethical concerns and various sources of bias in analysing healthcare data. These concepts then will be considered as the basis to pre-process, analyse and evaluate real-world healthcare data using various machine learning techniques. The learned concepts will be reinforced through lab sessions in Python.

Lectures:

• Introduction to healthcare systems and their components, layers of care, knowledge graphs and coding systems (e.g., ICD-10), electronic health and medical records, and quality measures [1-2].


• AI applications in delivery of health care services and ethical issues, including introduction to various healthcare applications, various sources of bias, and implications, ethical frameworks, limitations of AI on healthcare data, and second use of data [3-5].


• Formulating important clinical questions, different types and sources of clinical data such as clinical texts, omics data, medical imaging, signals and their values, application, and major issues [6-8].


• Clinical data pre-processing, including temporal information and data aggregation, medical records pre-processing (standardisation, imputation, and feature selection/extraction), and phenotyping [9-12].


• Clinical machine learning for healthcare, concepts, definitions, and design choices [13], linear / logistic regression, odds, and risk [13-14], survival analysis, hazard, and survival rate [15], traditional machine learning and deep learning, supervised, unsupervised, and weak/self-supervision [16-23], correlation vs causation [24], interpretable learning [24-25], dealing with data imbalance and missing values [26-30], and regularisation [30].


• important metrics for clinical practice, data quality vs quantity, and feasibility, impact, utility, and clinical evaluation [30-33].

• Loading various types of healthcare data and understanding their differences


• Dealing with missing data and data imputation


• Dealing with imbalance data and data imputation


• Analysing and evaluating machine learning models for various types of healthcare data [classification, early warning system, and survival analysis]


• Interpretability analysis

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to assess all taught materials through use of a broad range of questions covering problem solving questions that require recommendation of appropriate algorithms and solutions.  Examination will cover all taught materials following the lecture notes. The practical assignment focuses on implementation and evaluation of a machine learning system for real-world health care data with the focus on the selection of appropriate machine learning techniques and their implementation and evaluation.

 

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Coursework assignment in Python.


• Lab-based assignments in Python.


• Written examination.

• During lectures by question and answer sessions

• By means of lab problem sheets

• During supervised lab sessions

• Via feedback comments on assessed coursework

Module aims

• This module aims to introduce:
  - healthcare systems and ethical concerns,
  - various sources of healthcare data (e.g. electronic records, signals and clinical texts) and challenges associated with data analysis (feature selection/extraction, imputation, augmentation and standarisation),
  - machine learning methods to analyse healthcare data for early prediction, risk analysis, diagnosis, and survival analysis,
  - techniques to validate the performance of models in clinical practice and the importance if various performance measures,
  - interpretability frameworks (e.g., SHAP, LIME, deep learning based approaches) and their use in healthcare.
  
• The module also aims to provide opportunities for students to learn about the Surrey Pillars listed below.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

 

to deliver background and theory in lectures and use the lab sheets for practical application of the learnt theory. The latter also provides an opportunity for formative feedback and enables students to develop critical thinking and practical skills. To maximise learning, the coursework exposes students to the full development cycle of a clinically applicable system – data understanding and pre-processing, implementation, evaluation, interpretability analysis and reporting of the conclusions and challenges.

 

The learning and teaching methods include:

• Lectures –  deliver most of the content of the module and engage students in learning using active learning strategies such as discussions and online multiple choice questions.


• Computer labs –  engage students with real-world healthcare applications and give them insight on practical aspects of machine learning development and validation.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: EEEM069

Other information

This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Employability: This module allows students to understand and actively participate in development of machine learning techniques for a range of real-world applications. The module allows students to acquire practical skills and critical thinking that will be attractive to employers in this field. The focus of the assessment, especially coursework, is to familiarise them with the full development cycle of clinically applicable systems and how to deal with existing challenges.

Digital Capabilities: As with all modules, students are expected to engage with online material and resources via SurreyLearn, and other digital platforms. Students will develop further digital capabilities by developing python codes to analyse healthcare data during lab sessions and coursework.

Resourcefulness and Resilience: The assessment and lab practices are designed to enable students to understand the issues around AI developments and validation in real-practice and decide on the appropriate techniques for different applications.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.