Capstone Project and Graduation Requirements

Master of Health Informatics

A Capstone Project is one of the requirements of the MS in Health Informatics
degree at IUPUI.
By the end of the first year the student will select a capstone faculty advisor
who is a member of the graduate faculty and has an appointment in the
School of Informatics and Computing (SOIC). This individual will assume
responsibility for advising the student about course selection, graduation
requirements and capstone procedures. The student may select to have a
partner/sponsor from outside of the department faculty, a Health Informatics
doctoral student, but will use a member of the core faculty as a liaison.
A capstone project in health informatics is a non-independent project that will
be performed under the close supervision of the capstone faculty advisor.
Project possibilities include, but are not limited to:

Developing a project that fits into a larger framework

Systematic review
Piece of an ongoing research project
Substantial background literature review

If a capstone project is related in any way to a students professional work,

the student must describe for his/her advisor how that topic and his/her job
are distinct. He/She must be able to answer, what he/she is doing as a part of
the project that is above and beyond what he/she do for the job.
Capstone work involves the following steps.
Step One:

Student can start working on the project any time after the first year
but can only earn the credit on completion of adequate course work
(27-33 hours of coursework)
Filing out the Pre-Assessment Form, and getting the form signed and
approved by capstone faculty advisor before registering for INFO-B
691.

These are general guidelines to follow when the student plan and execute a
capstone project work.
o

It is important that the student must have a brief plan of the project
before he/she come to an advisor. Students who dont have any idea
are welcome to the project workshop held weekly by department
(schedule is to be added).

The student must have a capstone advisor in place at the beginning

of the term in which the project is undertaken. The PreAssessment Form should be signed off on by the faculty advisor
and submitted with a Pre-Assessment Paper to the Academic Advisor
prior to the start of the semester so that the student will be able to
register for INFO-B 691 Capstone Project.
Additionally, the study must be approved by the IUPUI Institutional
Review Board (IRB) if the study uses human subjects or clinical data
in any way. Many informatics projects will be exempt from full IRB
review. However, the IRB must grant the exemption. Research with
human subjects that is not approved by the IRB constitutes scientific
misconduct and is subject to disciplinary action. The student is
responsible for obtaining IRB approval. This process should be
started as soon as possible during the first step of capstone work.
Direction on how to get approval or exemption by IRB can be found
at Kuali Coeus (KC) on OneStart. https://onestart.iu.edu/my2prd/portal/172534

Step Two:

INFO-I 691 Health Informatics Project- Project work (e.g., development

of system, collection of data) and formal write-up (3.0 credits).

The following rules apply to the progression of the project work:

o The student will work during the second step with his/ her capstone
advisor. It is important that the student meet his/her capstone
advisor on a regular basis. It is strongly recommended that they
meet once every week or two, but not less than once a month.
o During this period, the student must prepare their final write-up.
There is no strict restriction on the length of the report, but the final
report must be complete and formatted in APA style. (Sample is
provided on SOIC website)
o Once the project has been completed and written-up, it will be
submitted to the Capstone Advisor for their approval, at least two
weeks before the end of the semester. If the final project is not
completed and submitted by this time, the student will automatically
receive an F and will have to retake the course.
o The project must be presented in front of faculty and peer on the
last Friday of the semester (date and time will be decided by week 4
of the semester). Each student will have 15 minutes to present
his/her work and 5 minutes for Q&A section.
o The student will make any corrections requested by the Capstone
Advisor and project committee during the presentation. Follow
project guidelines for document formatting requirements.
o The final submissions of the project include:
Revised technical report (2 printed copies + CD)
Presentation (can be in the form of a PPT or other types of
media)

The committee will grade the project with a letter grade on clarity of content,
scope of the project, approach to solve problem and proposed evaluation
method. Students will only receive their degree about one month after the
semester they have completed all 36 credit requirement and submitted their
technical report to the Administrative Assistant of the Department.
Good luck with the project!
Faculty of the Health Informatics Program