Tracy Hume: "All the classes had a high degree of academic rigor.”
When freelance writer Tracy Hume first learned about health information technology, she hadn’t written anything about the field before.
But the term “HIT” kept coming up in labor-market studies she perused while writing such projects as higher-education grant proposals.
“I thought, I should look into that,” she said. “This seems like something I should know more about.”
After checking out several on-line programs, she decided to enroll in UC San Diego Extension’s Specialized Certificate program in Health Information Technology.
Upon completion of the eight-course program in 2013, Hume now considers herself reasonably knowledgeable in the field. As proof, she points to her recent first byline in Healthcare IT News, an on-line publication devoted to HIT. The article, themed on "meaningful use," is her first in the healthcare information technology field.
In healthcare IT, meaningful use is defined as a set of criteria for the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) to improve patient care by healthcare providers.
“HIT is all about hospitals and physicians finally replacing their paper files with electronic files, a huge undertaking,” said Hume, who earned a psychology degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and resides in Greeley, Colorado. “It seems like healthcare is the last big industry to adopt technology.”
A free-lance writer since 2006, Hume has special praise for Extension healthcare instructors Noam Arzt and Leslie Bruce.
“Both had deep knowledge of the subject matter and ran their classes in a way that maximized learning,” she said. “I was pleased because all the classes had a high degree of academic rigor.”