You're in the right room.
A health informatics blog for the people who arrived from somewhere else. Nursing, pharmacy, public health, the ward. You already know what an EHR is. Nobody ever explained the API. We start there.
The square does not fit the circle. That is the entire point.
New here? Walk in this order.
Two minutes. What you will find, who it is for, and why there are no affiliate links anywhere on the site.
The one explainer that unlocks half the others. Read it before anything else technical.
If you start a health informatics programme this autumn, this one was written for you.
Why clinicians still hesitate at AI decision support
Sixty-six years after Ledley and Lusted computerised diagnosis, the hesitation is still there. This time it may be the right response, if you ask the right questions.
One blog, six ways in.
What is X, actually? Concepts taken apart for a reader who came from the clinic, not from computer science.
ConceptTool ReviewHonest takes on the software you will actually be handed. Limitations named first, rated for student usability, never general.
Honest takeGuideGrad school, career paths, study strategy. Specific and actionable, never motivational.
How toLabInteractive posts with embedded components. Learn by doing, completable in under ten minutes.
InteractiveResourceCurated collections, honestly annotated, with the catch on each one named. Under ten items, always.
Curated listField NotesLongform, essayistic, more ambitious with structure. The intellectual range of the blog lives here.
LongformRecent, across every type.
APIs, without the computer science
You have used one today without knowing it. Here is the whole idea in plain clinical terms, including auth, versioning, and the failure modes that actually get people paged.
HL7 v2 vs FHIR, actually
The pipe-delimited standard versus the modern API. What each one actually is, where you will meet it in a real organisation, and which questions to ask before the integration meeting.
What this blog is, and is not
No affiliate links, no sponsored posts, and no pretending every new tool is revolutionary. Here is what you are actually signing up for by reading this.
Epic's Reporting Workbench, reviewed for students
Powerful, ubiquitous, and genuinely painful to learn. Its limitations, prerequisites, and whether it belongs in your first six months or your second year.
REDCap, reviewed for students
The default research capture tool at many academic medical centres. Its limitations first, what it is actually good at, and whether it belongs in your first semester.
For the incoming MSHI cohort
Specific first-term moves for health informatics master's students who arrived from clinical practice, not from a CS degree. What to learn first, what to defer, and what to stop apologising for.
A square and a circle, refusing to line up. The mark for people who never quite did either.
One email. Only when it is worth opening.
No loops. No "you've got this." Just the post, when there is one, and nothing in between.