welcome
Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for Healthcare IT: What you need to know to build and run real-world health systems.
What you need to bring to the table
To get the most out of this book, you should be a developer who is comfortable reasoning about APIs and distributed systems. You don’t need a medical background, but you do need to be ready for the reality that healthcare isn't just modern web APIs. While we definitely use REST and JSON (especially for FHIR), real-world integration often means working with event-driven messaging like HL7 v2, legacy structured text, and complex workflow engines.
If you can trace data as it moves between fragmented systems and think critically about security and data integrity, you’re ready. We aren't just building request/response models; we’re building on decades of layered standards and regulatory constraints.
Why I am writing this
I began writing this book because I saw a massive gap between healthcare theory and the gritty reality of production environments. Many developers enter this field and are immediately overwhelmed by legacy jargon, complex security requirements, and the pressure of building systems where data integrity is critical.
By the end of this book, you should understand: