Jim Hoover is the founder and principal of Avant Health Sciences, where he leads EHR data migration, patient matching, and data quality remediation projects for healthcare organizations.

Jim’s career spans nearly a decade of focused work in healthcare informatics and identity resolution, building on an earlier background as a systems programmer. He is the inventor of the “advanced vector matching” algorithm for patient matching and smart, fault-tolerant patient search — technology that is patent-pending and now licensed to a major healthcare IT software conglomerate to modernize patient identification for its clients.

He has led master patient index (MPI) cleanups, duplicate and overlapping patient analysis, and EHR data migration projects across the industry, and has developed data quality metrics and dashboards used by health system executives to track remediation progress. His work on identifying and remediating overlaid patient records — a problem largely untouched elsewhere in health IT — has helped establish new approaches to a persistent patient safety issue.

Jim is also the lead instructor for two courses at Charter Oak State College, part of the State of Connecticut’s higher educational system. Jim wrote the classes, “Research Methodologies and Data Visualization” and “Healthcare Informatics and Technologies.” In the data visualization course, for example, Jim teaches students how to vibe code using generative AI to create data visualization tools, rather than relying on commercial software. In addition, Jim has written a companion textbook, Data Visualization Through Vibe Coding, and is trying to finish his first draft for two other texts: The Art and Science of Patient Matching and Computational Healthcare and Healthcare Informatics, An (Im)Practical Guide.

Sample lectures from his coursework:

• Healthcare IT Projects
• Jim’s Rule of Writing
• Return on Investment

A frequent speaker and published author in the field, Jim has written for the AHIMA Journal and the CHIA Journal on topics including patient matching, algorithmic bias, and naming policy, and served on AHIMA’s Naming Policy Committee. He was the 2022 recipient of the California Health Information Management Association (CHIA) Industry Champion award and has held multiple leadership roles within CHIA’s Health Information Integrity Committee.

Jim holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and completed coursework toward a Master of Science in Finance, both from Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Randolph-Macon College.

Outside of work, Jim is a photographer, writer, and avid hiker, and produces video and podcast content on healthcare informatics topics.