Healthcare IT Networks: The Fundamentals, Plain & Simple

WHY HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS NEED TO UNDERSTAND NETWORKS

You don't need to become a network engineer. But it's difficult to fully understand healthcare IT without understanding how systems connect and communicate.

Healthcare depends on information moving between people, departments, applications, medical devices, electronic health records, and increasingly outside organizations. Networks provide the pathways that make those connections possible.

And that helps explain some of healthcare IT's biggest challenges. Why can't two systems easily exchange information? Why are standards necessary? What does interoperability really mean? How is information protected as it moves? And how can technology improve—or sometimes complicate—healthcare workflow?

This course gives you the foundation to understand those questions without getting buried in technical detail.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

We'll start with how computer networks developed and the basic principles behind how they work. Then we'll connect those fundamentals directly to healthcare.

You'll explore:

• How networks connect systems and allow information to move

• Interoperability and why healthcare systems sometimes struggle to communicate

• Encryption and how information can be protected

• Standards and why they're essential for exchanging healthcare information

• The relationship between technology and healthcare workflow

• Software as a Service (SaaS) and changing approaches to delivering applications

You'll also have a quiz and practical encryption exercise to reinforce what you've learned

NETWORKING—PLAIN & SIMPLE

This course is designed for healthcare professionals, managers, students, and business professionals who need to understand healthcare IT but don't need to become networking specialists. No technical background is required.

My approach is practical. I spent 35 years designing, developing, and bringing medical technology to market, progressing from engineering leadership to VP of Marketing and ultimately president of a healthcare IT company. I've also spent many years teaching graduate-level university courses.

My goal isn't to teach you how to build a network. It's to give you enough understanding of networks, interoperability, standards, security, and workflow to better understand how healthcare information systems work—and why they sometimes don't.