On this day 20 years ago, the very first Healthcare IT Today article went live. Technically, it wasn’t “Healthcare IT Today” back then, it was the EMR and HIPAA blog. And because it started as a hobby, I even initally hosted it at CrashUtah.com/emr. About a month later, I’d finally made enough to splurge on a very official $15/year domain: EMRandHIPAA.com.
We’ve come a long way since those early days. And no, I’m not linking to those first posts, I’m still too embarrassed to read them myself.
The real turning point for the site came when the Obama administration announced $36 billion in stimulus funding for EMRs (yes it was EMR, not EHR at the time). EMR and HIPAA and its sister site EMR and EHR were already strong from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint, so when the entire industry started chasing stimulus dollars, both sites exploded practically overnight.
From that moment on, I published an article on both sites every single day for 5–10 years. That momentum eventually allowed me to quit my day job, where I implemented an EMR and did full-stack IT support before jump into full-time blogging and now a full fledge media company. At one point we were running 15 different sites covering EMR, EHR, mobile health, digital health, RCM, and the broader world of health IT. Thankfully, Colin Hung stepped in with a very smart suggestion: consolidate everything under what is now Healthcare IT Today.
If you want to dive deeper into the history of Healthcare IT Today and hear a few fun stories along the way, check out this video interview where Brittany Quemby, our VP of Marketing, sits down with me to talk through the evolution of the publication.
As you can imagine, 20 years means there are a lot of stories to tell. And many that probably will only be told at a party at a conference like HIMSS, Swaay.Health LIVE, or ViVE. At the core of all of this are the people you meet along the way. It’s been a privilege to share so many stories over the years, and our greatest hope is that these stories help others navigate the complex world of health IT and ultimately, make a meaningful difference for patients.
It’s really hard to believe 20 years have passed since that first article was published in 2005. A lot has changed, and while some things haven’t, the one constant is the kindness and thoughtfulness of the people in healthcare. Nearly everyone I meet is driven by a genuine desire to improve care and help patients. That’s something special, and I hope Healthcare IT Today has played even a small part in supporting that mission.
What’s fascinating is I used to really celebrate milestones as I hit them. Here’s one of my first when I celebrated 10,000 pageviews. Between consolidating sites, switching analytics tools, and the rise of social media, it’s nearly impossible to pin down our total impact over 20 years. While we don’t have perfect aggregate numbers, we can share some of our most recent metrics and we thought you’d enjoy a look at them as we celebrate two decades of delivering great healthcare IT content.
- 18,188 Articles on Healthcare IT Today
- 51,713 Email Subscribers to the Healthcare IT Today Newsletter
- 6,626,313 Emails Opened in 2025
- 1,800 Videos on Healthcare IT Today
- 524,300 Video Views on YouTube
- 2,124,000 Minutes of Watch Time on YouTube
- 105,669 Followers on X/Twitter
- 53,865 Followers on LinkedIn
- 1,881,987 LinkedIn Impressions and 436,253 LinkedIn Members Reached in 2025
It’s astonishing to think we’re now celebrating a multi-decade milestone. More than anything, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everyone who’s been part of Healthcare IT Today. What started as a hobby grew into a career, a dream I get to live every day and that’s only possible because of our readers, sponsors, guests, experts, listeners, viewers, subscribers, followers, and of course, the incredible Healthcare IT Today team.
On the Healthcare IT Today podcast, we start every episode with the line, “We LOVE this stuff.” During the very first recording, I instinctively added a little growl on the word love and of course, that’s what everyone commented on, so it stuck. What amazes me is that, 20 years into this journey, I really do still love this stuff. I’ll never get tired of connecting with the health IT community, and I’ll never tire of watching technology make healthcare better.
As we look ahead to the next 20 years, I can’t say exactly where the journey will take us. What I can say is that healthcare isn’t slowing down and technology will continue to play a defining role in improving it. We’re grateful to be at the forefront of that evolution and to share it with this incredible community.
Thank you for being part of Healthcare IT Today. It’s a privilege to do this work every day.
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