AI AND HEALTH (ONLINE) - 2025/6

Module Overview

The module provides an application-focused tour of machine learning for real-world healthcare research and applications 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.

Self-directed coding lab activities and coursework are designed to support understanding of the theory and enable development of practical skills required for future employability.

Module provider

SOL - Computer Science and Elec 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 1

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 self-directed practical sheets in Python.
Captured content will include: 

• Introduction to healthcare systems and their components.


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


• Formulating important clinical questions, different types and sources of clinical data.


• Clinical data pre-processing (standardisation, imputation, and feature selection/extraction), and phenotyping.


• Clinical machine learning for healthcare, concepts, definitions, and design choices, linear / logistic regression, odds, and risk, survival analysis, hazard, and survival rate, traditional machine learning and deep learning, supervised, unsupervised, and weak/self-supervision, correlation vs causation, interpretable learning, dealing with data imbalance and missing values, and regularisation.


• Important metrics for clinical practice, data quality vs quantity, and feasibility, impact, utility, and clinical evaluation.

Practical self-guided lab activities on machine learning developments will include:

• 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

Tutorials will mainly include Q&A sessions to enable students to discuss any questions. Forum discussions is encouraged especially around self-guided practices and the coursework.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

None

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 online materials including captured contents, self-guided practices and tutorials. The coursework 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 (40% weighting). 


• Written examination (60% weighting).

Formative assessment and feedback:
For the module, students will receive formative assessment/feedback in the following ways:

• During tutorials by offering question and answer sessions.


• Via feedback on assessed coursework.

Module aims

• Healthcare systems and ethical concerns.
• Various sources of healthcare data and challenges associated with data analysis (feature selection/extraction, imputation, augmentation and standardisation).
• 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 of various performance measures.
• Interpretability frameworks (e.g., SHAP, LIME, deep learning based approaches) and their use in healthcare.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to deliver background and theory in captured content and use the self-guided lab activities to provide opportunities for practical application of the learnt theory. The latter also provides an opportunity for summative 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:

• Captured content which will constitute the primary vehicle for delivery of the taught content.


• Self-guided lab activities in Python which will engage students with real-world healthcare applications and give them insight on practical aspects of machine learning development and validation.


• Discussion forum that engages students in learning using active learning strategies such as discussions.


• Tutorials to support students in learning and provide opportunities to ask questions.

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: EEEM074

Other information

We are committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. 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 the virtual learning environment, and other digital platforms. Students will develop further digital capabilities by developing Python code to analyse healthcare data by undertaking self-guided lab activities and coursework. 
Resourcefulness and Resilience: The assessment and self-guided labs 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.