The nationally recognized Health Information Technology program at UT plans to establish a formidable workforce that will soon drive the way healthcare information is recorded and shared.

The Health Information Technology,  or Health IT, program at UT was one of nine funded across the country as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed in 2009 by President Barack Obama. This act, which was aimed at reinvigorating the economy by creating jobs, also included funds to incentivize doctors and hospitals to make their medical records electronic. 

Students attend six weeks of IT courses and complete a two week internship in some aspect of Health IT. Students also present their research projects to prospective employers at the end of their ninth and last week, which this semester will take place at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 10.

Robert Ligon, a faculty member at Health IT, helped establish the current career development program that integrates both technology-based training and business and career-related certification. He asked industries what sorts of skill sets and knowledge they would like people to have in order to work for them.

“One of the skill sets was understanding workflow, and so when you put this technology in a physician practice or a hospital it totally optimizes the workflow — it makes it more efficient,” Ligon said.

Ligon said that he thinks that there are a lot of wins to having hospitals and physician practices integrate electronic medical records into their databases. 

“So when you put electronic health records into that paradigm, you see some things. For example, medical errors right now are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.,” Ligon said. “Medical records kill more people than motor vehicle accidents and breast cancer combined. Being able to reduce errors is one of the main tenets of our work.”

In addition to understanding how technology, electronic records and medical security work in health care, Health IT is also concerned about business and career development. As a component of their five-part course, instructors work with students on their resumes, conduct mock interviews and eventually send them to do a two-week internship in some aspect of Health IT.

Health IT also offers a class about health care policy, including Medicare and Medicaid and how these programs are changing in healthcare.

“When you start off talking about healthcare, there’s a lot of changes going on — what you’re actually talking about is the triple aim in healthcare, that’s three things: we want to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, we want to improve the cost of care, then we want to improve access to care,” Ligon said. 

Ligon said the importance of having these records accessible is embedded in the concept of interoperability, or being able to have your electronic records talk to other electronic records that can talk to hospitals.

“Information is the currency in healthcare — everybody wants information,” Ligon said. “We talk about how you acquire it, how you store it, how you analyze it — all of these aspects are important in the accuracy and security of our patients.”

Leanne Field, the director of Health IT and the public health program at UT, said that students in the Health IT program have a high hiring rate, around 97 percent, due to extensive hands-on training with medical records.

“We really have a unique program in the country in that many of the electronic health record vendors have donated their technologies so that we can offer our students hands-on training.” Field said. “It opens up a new field that they [students] would not be able to enter otherwise. It opens up a field that is traditionally closed.”