Navigating the Code

🧠 Intro Paragraph

In Navigating the Code, Barry P. Chaiken, MD, MPH delivers a bold argument: if healthcare is to evolve, it must shed its dependence on century-old processes and embrace the full potential of digital transformation. This book is a call to action for clinicians, executives, and technologists seeking to modernize care delivery and improve outcomes through intelligent, ethical use of healthcare IT.

📖 A Blueprint for Transforming Healthcare

Unlike many industries, healthcare clings to outdated systems—despite facing modern challenges in cost, access, and quality. With over 25 years of experience as a physician and informaticist, Dr. Chaiken offers RHIT—Revolutionary Healthcare Information Technology—as a practical, businesslike framework for change.

More than a theory, RHIT is a guide. Navigating the Code shows how digital tools, when applied strategically, can transform care delivery for both patients and clinicians.

📚 What You’ll Learn

• Why today’s healthcare crisis is rooted in resistance to change

• How RHIT can address deep-rooted clinical and operational inefficiencies

• How to align technology with the values of the Hippocratic Code

• Why successful transformation requires both leadership and workflow design

• How interoperability, economics, and ethics must converge to create lasting change

👤 Featuring 18 Healthcare Thought Leaders

In addition to Dr. Chaiken’s insights, the book presents the voices of 18 respected experts in medicine and healthcare IT—offering real-world context, validation, and vision.

🧩 Structure of the Book

Part I – Diagnoses the global challenges in healthcare, including failures in technology, change management, and business operations
Part II – Introduces RHIT as a model for organizational transformation
Part III – Builds a modern change management framework focused on workflow integration
Part IV – Applies RHIT to clinical quality, patient access, health outcomes, and financial sustainability
Part V – Brings it all together, exploring the economic and interoperability dimensions of the connected healthcare organization

Foreword – John Halamka, MD, MS

Introduction – The Hippocratic Code

Preface – The Road to RHIT

Part I – Thinking about Healthcare

1   Current State of Worldwide Healthcare
Great Events in Healthcare History
Beatriz de Faria-Leao, MD, PhD, Brazil

2   Healthcare IT: The Digital Conumdrum
A Brief History of Computers in Healthcare
Gareth Sherlock, United Kingdom

3   The Management Change
Open Notes, a Change Management Tool
Thomas M Koulopoulos, United States

4   A CAT Scan of Today’s Healthcare Business
What the Healthcare World Needs NOW
David Shulkin, MD, United States

Part II – Transforming Today’s Healthcare with Revolutionary HIT

5   Implementing Revolutionary HIT Change: The Chaiken Methodology
The Chaiken Methodology as a Mathematical Expression
John Glaser, PhD, United States

6   Transforming Today’s Healthcare with HIT: Systems Thinking
Systems Analysis and Design
Paul Barach, MD, MPH, United States

7   A Revolutionary Process
The Patient in the Chaiken RHIT Methodology
Ahmed Zakiuddin, MD, Saudi Arabia

8 Transformational Outcomes
Ancient Knowledge versus Intelligent Machines
David Nash, MD, MBA, United States

Part III – Applied Change Management

9   Applied Change Management: From Stand-Alone
Processes to Integrated Workflow
When in Crisis Mode, Follow the Data
Ron Wyatt, MD, United States

10   Applied Change Management and Clinical Workflow
Lawrence Leonard Weed (1923–2017)
Joseph Restuccia, PhD, MPH, United States