How do I get domain knowledge to start programming for Health Care Industry

Question

I was highly impressed with this question and its responses concerning domain knowledge in the finance industry and it was very useful to understand what kind of expertise one need before starting Programming in Finance Industry.

• I want to get domain knowledge to start programming in Health Care Industry and so how should I go about it ?

Update: Following one answer about my current situation

• I am currently working as PHP Developer in US for 1 yr.

Answer 1

You'll need either long experience in the industry (not possible for you today) or a partner who has it.

Maybe you can get started by helping electronic medical records along. Knowing the XML standards that are out there would be a good way to start diving in.

I think there might be a market in being able to sit down with doctors in practices and help them map from existing schemas to an XML standard. It's not a trivial task; it requires both IT and medical knowledge.

Answer 2

A big part of health care computing is in database management. There are lots of records to maintain, many in strange formats, all being contributed by different people in different agencies, which need to be kept current with each other. Additionally, privacy and data security is very important.

My alma mater has an entire department dedicated to the subject, so there's definitely jobs available, and a unique set of skills required:

You can expect to take courses in the areas of database design, networks and telecommunications, health care software design, structure and management of the health care systems, epidemiology, hospital information systems, information resource management, medical methodology, systems analysis, healthcare ethics and project management. In addition to the School's faculty, many lectures are given by practising professionals from the community.

Answer 3

Hi

Best way to get domain knowledge to start programming in healthcare is to work in that domain, preferably as a programmer. I know, I know, that's a circular argument and just a different way of stating that you can't get the job without experience and you can't get experience without the job. Here goes with something more helpful:

-- Tell us what stage of your career you are at. Are you still at college, in which case appropriate courses or work experience during long holidays would be sensible routes.

-- Are you already a programmer in another industry. If this is the case then what technologies, software etc, are you familiar with.

-- If you are not a programmer, perhaps you are already working in the healthcare industry in some other role. There are routes from there to programming too.

But based on what you have told us, very little indeed, it's difficult to provide any useful advice.

Regards

Mark

Answer 4

Hmmm. I program in the healthcare industry and know almost nothing about database management and hardly ever use XML. My background is real-time control systems, hardware interfaces, etc. The "healthcare industry" is a pretty big place, you might want to get a little more specific. I program CT scanners, by the way.

Answer 5

Martin Fowler's book "Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models" it's about trying to find patterns in domain models of businesses. The patterns come from various domains, including health care, financial trading, and accounting. I think this is the only book where I've read something about health care domain.

Some design issues that Fowler mention came from a project called COSMOS (from health care domain). Further information -slides, doc, pdf- about that project is available at http://rewrite.rickbradley.com/articles/2006/07/06/cosmos-documentation/

Answer 6

Your best bet would be at [hl7][1]

[1]: http://www.hl7.org. This is (the) standard setting not for profit organization for the healthcare industry. There efforts literally adress all disciplines of health care and XML based. You could say HL7 is replica of EDI starndards for health care industry but much more evolved.

Answer 7

There are two pieces of regulation I would highly recomend you learn about,particularly as they impact programs: HIPPA and CFR 21 Part 11. As the government is taking over you should probably learn everything you can about FIPS as well. If you plan on dealing with medical/phrama/government data then you will have to deal with all three of them!

Answer 8

A skill I had to learn when entering the medical field was validation of the software or product. While each company has its own process for this, it never hurts to be familiar with things like the FDA Medical Device Validation Guidance

Answer 9

I worked the first 5 years of my career in healthcare and pharma.

Here's a list of tips for landing the kind of job you're looking for (geared more towards healthcare than pharma, since that's what you specifically mentioned in your quesiton) in order of importance:

• Check out CCHIT's requirements on ambulatory EHR's. CCHIT is the main certification body for EHRs - most any popular system is CCHIT-certified. The requirements document will describe the main functionality of just about any EHR on the market.
• Find some healthcare professionals to talk to about how the system works. Do you know any doctors, nurses, or medical billing professionals? Ask them about what their daily duties are like - it'll help you understand how both medicine and the billing system work.
• Learn .NET or Java - I don't know of any healthcare or pharma apps written in PHP (although that doesn't mean they don't exist).
• Read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - In both of my jobs, I implemented a lot of the patterns therein.
• Learn HL7 - It'll give you a lot of insight into how medicine works.
• Read the source of some open source EHR implementations. Nothing I've seen from the open source offerings is nearly as good as the commercial ones, but it'll give you a real good idea of what EHR systems do.
• Move to the Philadelphia area - It's loaded with healthcare and pharma companies.