A Guide for the Health IT-Perplexed

Encountering the world of healthcare information technology is a lot like being a first-time foreign tourist in Las Vegas. We've all been puzzled by the flash and the alien language of this industry at one time or another. Some of my own memories of that befuddlement came flooding back this week when I started reading a new guidebook to the healthcare IT, "Meaningful Use and Beyond," published by O'Reilly and co-authored by open-source health IT mavens Fred Trotter and David Uhlman.

The target audiences of the book are veteran IT professionals from other industries and recently minted college computer science majors who might be looking to start careers in health IT...The highest compliment I can pay Trotter and Uhlman is to say I wish their book had been available to me as a decoder ring when I started out...