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Updated in [July 26th, 2023]

This course provides an overview of the field of healthcare informatics, from its historical roots to its current state. It begins with a discussion of the long-recognized capabilities of healthcare informatics and the reasons for their slow adoption. It then introduces the Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR) standard and its potential to transform healthcare. This is illustrated through an interview with a clinical team developing a FHIR-based tool for use in an ICU environment. The course then surveys the problems and challenges facing healthcare systems around the world, with a particular focus on the US. It introduces chronic disease and its role in rising healthcare costs, and explores alternate care models that show promise of improving healthcare outcomes while lowering cost, and their dependence on information technology. It then introduces the concept of a Learning Healthcare System, which continuously improves using informatics to glean new knowledge from actual patient care and feed it back to providers as they take care of future patients. This is illustrated through an interview with a team of Emory researchers who are using a FHIR-based tool to help lower the cost of hospital care while improving outcomes. The course then discusses electronic medical records, the federal programs to stimulate their adoption, and the challenges physicians have in using them. It includes an interview with the lead of the FHIR effort at the major health IT vendor Cerner. It then provides a detailed discussion of the rich array of patient-facing informatics tools and approaches used in the past and being increasingly deployed at present, and includes an activity using Microsoft’s Personal Health Record system for patients. The course concludes with a detailed discussion of the complex technical and policy issues surrounding the sharing and exchange of confidential health information, and includes interviews with a Blockchain expert and with an expert on data models for sharing of healthcare information for research.