Healthcare Uncharted

The Healthcare Technology
You Were Never Taught

A living resource for clinical informatics, healthcare data architecture, and the real story behind the systems that run modern medicine. Built for clinicians, analysts, and anyone who wants to understand why — not just how.

David Eitel · RRT, MHA, MSRT, RRT-ACCS

Explore Tools Start Learning
The Universal Healthcare Data Chain — Epic, Cerner, and FHIR all use this
Patient / EPT → Encounter / CSN → Clinical Event → Data Point / FSD → Who + When
Every piece of clinical data — flowsheets, labs, orders, notes — anchors to this chain. Understanding this is understanding healthcare IT.
1987
Year HL7 was founded by Dr. Don Simborg at UCSF
$25.9B
HITECH Act investment that forced modern EHR adoption in 2009
48%
Of U.S. hospital beds run on Epic — the most widely used EHR
145+
FHIR resource types defining the modern healthcare data standard
Tools & Games

Learn by doing

Interactive tools built on real healthcare data models. Each one teaches a concept you'd spend months picking up on the job.

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Game · SQL · Epic Schema
Clinical SQL Mystery
Solve real clinical investigation cases using SQL against an Epic-style database. Four cases from Intern to Fellowship difficulty — census reports, sepsis audits, pharmacy gaps, and 30-day readmissions.
SQLite in browser EPT / CSN / FSD 4 cases
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Interactive Map · AI Readiness
AI in Healthcare: Value vs. Hype
An interactive map of AI across the full healthcare organization — business and clinical lanes, readiness ratings per department, vendor landscape, and implementation timeline. Know what actually works.
Business + Clinical Vendor landscape Timeline
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Reference · Glossary · Resources
HIT Terminology & Reference
A searchable, filterable crosswalk of Epic, Cerner, and FHIR terminology — EPT vs Person, FLO vs DTA, CSN vs encntr_id, and every major concept mapped to its universal FHIR equivalent. Plus curated reading list.
Epic ↔ Cerner FHIR crosswalk Resources
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Learn

From zero to informed

Deep-dive articles on the concepts that shape every decision in healthcare technology. No vendor marketing. No surface-level overviews.

01 · EPIC DATA ARCHITECTURE
How Epic Actually Stores Your Data
Chronicles, Clarity, and Caboodle explained. The FLO → FSD → CSN → EPT chain. Why there's a 24-hour lag in your reports. What INI master files are and why every clinical data point has one.
Chronicles Clarity Caboodle ETL Core concept
02 · INTEROPERABILITY HISTORY
The 40-Year Fight for Healthcare Data Standards
Why did it take a $25.9 billion federal law to make hospitals use electronic records? The story of Dr. Don Simborg, HL7, HIPAA, HITECH, Meaningful Use, FHIR, and the 21st Century Cures Act.
HL7 HITECH FHIR Don Simborg Essential history
03 · EPIC vs CERNER CROSSWALK
Same Structure, Different Language
EPT is a Person. CSN is an encntr_id. FLO is a DTA. FSD is a clinical_event row. Both systems arrived at the same data model independently — here's exactly how the terminology maps across.
DTA Event Code Millennium Crosswalk
04 · ANALYTICS TOOLS EXPLAINED
SlicerDicer vs Reporting Workbench vs Radar
Three tools in the same Analytics Catalog, three different data sources, three different jobs. The ~24hr lag, real-time Chronicles queries, and when to use which tool — without the SQL.
SlicerDicer RWB Cogito End user guide
Why It's Built This Way

Healthcare data follows medicine's shape

The Patient → Encounter → Event → Data Point structure wasn't designed by engineers. It was forced by the nature of healthcare itself — and then reinforced by 30 years of law.

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Medicine is event-based
Nothing in medicine happens in a vacuum. A blood pressure reading only means something tied to a patient, a visit, a time, and a clinician. Without context, a value of 140 could mean anything.
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Billing requires the same chain
CMS and every payer require patient + encounter + diagnosis + procedure to process a claim. EHRs were built to produce that chain naturally — so data structure mirrors billing structure.
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The law enforces it
The HITECH Act (2009) paid hospitals $25.9B to adopt certified EHRs and penalized those who didn't. Certified EHRs had to meet ONC standards — which mandated the Patient → Encounter data model.
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Interoperability demanded it
HL7 v2 (1989) and FHIR (2012) both formalize the same chain as named resource types: Patient, Encounter, Observation, MedicationRequest. Any EHR that didn't follow it couldn't share data.
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Patient safety across settings
A patient's record needs to follow them across departments, facilities, and years. Epic's "one patient, one record" philosophy and Cerner's person-centric model both anchor everything to the person first.
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Quality reporting requires it
CMS penalizes hospitals for readmissions, infections, and mortality. You can only compute these metrics if every event is tied to an encounter and every encounter to a patient — no shortcuts.
David Eitel
David Eitel
RRT · MHA
MSRT · RRT-ACCS
About Healthcare Uncharted

Healthcare technology is full of territory that nobody maps in plain language. Clinicians use Epic and Cerner every day without knowing why the data is structured the way it is. Analysts write reports without understanding what a CSN is or why there's a 24-hour lag. Leaders make AI investments without knowing what actually works versus what's still emerging.

Healthcare Uncharted exists to close that gap. This is a living resource built from real clinical and informatics experience — interactive tools, deep-dive articles, terminology guides, and honest assessments of where healthcare technology actually stands.

Built by a Respiratory Therapist turned healthcare informaticist, with credentials across clinical practice, health administration, and data systems. The goal is simple: explain the why, not just the what.