Health Information Technology Fundamentals

Welcome. This website is geared toward providing education to individuals who are seeking career opportunities in the healthcare information technology industry (HIT). It will cover a broad range of topics from how HIT is currently used to support the clinical, research and business objectives of healthcare organizations, to an introduction to the basic principles of medical informatics and the importance of HIT in population health and clinical research. The site was founded by Michael Stearns, MD, a physician informaticist with over 30 years of experience in clinical medicine and the HIT industry.  The topics on this website will be continually expanding.  Currently covered topics (and topics in development) on this website include:

• HIT Training Programs
• Electronic Health Records
• Patient Safety in the Digital Era
• Health Information Exchange
• Structured Data and Context in Healthcare
• Post-Coordination and Pre-Coordination of Codified Concepts
• Data Integrity
• Interoperability
• Patient Engagement
• Clinical Decision Support
• ICD-9-CM
• ICD-10-CM
• ICD-11
• SNOMED CT
• Evaluation and Management Coding
• Genomics (Personalized Health Care)
• Medico-Legal Considerations in HIT
• Patient Portals
• Personal Health Records
• Mobile Applications for Healthcare
• Data Analytics

For additional information about the author, please see Michael Stearns MD’s brief bio