Prior to its inception as a company, the principals of the NCHCI lead an effort to create the nation's first undergraduate degree program in Health Care Informatics (HCI) at Montana Tech of The University of Montana in Butte.   Created in 2002, the degree program was designed to address the health care industry's growing need to implement electronic medical records and health information exchange.   The HCI program is offered at the Associate, Bachelors, and Graduate Certificate levels.   

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Examples of significant NCHCI project efforts in health care informatics have included:

• Development and management of regional and national health care information technology conferences

• Montana Health Information Exchange (HIE) syndromic surveillance pilot project with Hewlett-Packard, CrossFlo, and Montana DPHHS

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to develop a three-year Academy for Advanced Nursing Workforce Solutions to provide needed soft skills training to nurses during their final year of formal nursing education

• African Family Medicine Education and Development Initiative (AFMED) in cooperation with Maternal Life International to develop distance education pilot projects in Jos, Nigeria and Bo, Sierra Leone, Africa

• Presentations at numerous national meetings and conferences focused on health information technology

• Contract with Montana Department of Labor to investigate the possibility of creating a degree in Computational Science in the Montana University System

• Creation of a marketing and business analysis for a national company specializing in clinical quality improvement

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