Fifty Years as a Health Information Management Professional: An American Perspective.

Some years ago while we were serving as temporary advisors at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Dr A. S. Härö, Chief of the Planning Department of the National Health Board in Helsinki, Finland told me about an article he had written to celebrate an anniversary of his graduation from medical school. The idea of commemorating a milestone in one’s professional life by writing an article about it was appealing to me and I kept it in the back of my mind. When I was invited to contribute to the history edition of Health Information Management Journal, I was able to base it on a paper which was written 50 years after my graduation from university.1 Anniversaries offer the opportunity to look back and reminisce about past experiences and events and to recall the changes that have taken place over the years. I welcome the opportunity to do both; not with nostalgia but rather as a way of highlighting certain events. I will mention lessons I learned throughout my career and end by reflecting on where we are now and on what a lies ahead. To cover the 50-year period (1953–2003), rather than trying to identify all the significant changes that had occurred in the profession, and surely overlooking important ones, I reviewed the issues in the American association’s professional journal for the years 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, and 2003. I also looked back on what I was doing in those years and what I learned along the way, since this obviously affects my current thinking.