Authors

Andrew Gettinger

Portrait of Andrew Gettinger

Dr. Andrew Gettinger serves as chief clinical officer for ONC. He is a professor of anesthesiology emeritus at Geisel School of Medicine and adjunct professor of computer science at Dartmouth, and was formerly the chief medical information officer (CMIO) for Dartmouth-Hitchcock and associate dean for clinical informatics at Geisel.

Dr. Gettinger has extensive experience in the field of health information technology. He led the development of an electronic health record (EHR) system at Dartmouth and subsequently was the senior physician leader during Dartmouth’s transition to a vendor-based EHR. Dr. Gettinger’s clinical practice and research has been focused both on anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and on information technology as it applies generally to health care.

Dr. Gettinger founded the clinical informatics group at Dartmouth. He has been an active participant in the policy debates regarding patient privacy at both the state and federal level, testifying before the senate HELP committee and participating as a member of the New Hampshire legislative taskforce on privacy. He served in Senator Orrin G. Hatch’s office as a Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellow.

Dr. Gettinger received his A.B. from Dartmouth College and his M.D. from Dartmouth Medical School. He trained at the Hartford Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in anesthesiology, pediatric anesthesiology, and critical care medicine. He is board certified in anesthesiology, critical care medicine and was among the inaugural cohort of physicians certified in clinical informatics by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 2013.

Andrew Gettinger's Latest Blog Posts

A New Challenge Competition – Can you Help Make EHR Safety Reporting Easy

Andrew Gettinger | May 22, 2018

Reporting on the safe use of health information technology (health IT) – especially the use of electronic health records (EHRs) – continues to be a challenge to many healthcare providers. While health IT adoption has increased significantly (as of 2015, 96 percent of hospitals and 78 percent of office-based physicians had certified EHRs), usability and the ease-of-reporting concerns remain.

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Reflections from a Health IT Perspective on Disaster Response

Andrew Gettinger | November 15, 2017

Health information technology (health IT) has come a long way since Hurricane Katrina came roaring ashore in 2005.  At that time, few hospitals in the region had adopted electronic health records (EHRs).  To address some coordination issues, a national foundation comprised of several private businesses, national physician organizations, and other health professionals stood up a basic system to share medication history with providers in a matter of hours. This system, KatrinaHealth.org, was helpful in limited circumstances;

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Making Health IT Safer and Easier to Use in Real Life – Practical Tools for Health Care Providers

Andrew Gettinger | March 21, 2017

Every day, clinicians work tirelessly to provide the best possible care for their patients. Clinicians and other health care providers like hospitals are increasingly using health information technology (health IT) such as electronic health records (EHRs), and a growing body of evidence shows health IT can help them make care safer. However, new technology can pose challenges and risks. At the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC),

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ONC Publishes New Reports on Health IT Safety

Andrew Gettinger | June 10, 2016

Safety is and always has been a top priority at ONC. We have incorporated safety into the ONC Health IT Certification Program [PDF-257KB] and our guiding documents, the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2015 – 2020 [PDF-1.2MB] and Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.  More specifically, ONC created a series of tools to help with the safe use of health IT, including a guide to e-prescribing and nine self-assessment protocols (called SAFER guides) that identify recommended practices to optimize the safety and safe use of electronic health records (EHRs).

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