Which programming/computer networking skills will help me work in Healthcare IT sector ?

Question

Hello guys

i am a medical doctor. I wish to work in Healthcare IT sector 3 years down the line in my career. I am a self learner when it comes to learning computer skills, using various online courses (like Berkely) and Keystone Courses.

I have recently learned c and C++. I had given a start to Lisp but didn't go much deep.

Now i was about to start learning Java, when i came across this website via slashdot.

My question is simple : what specific set of computer skills should i be investing my time in to be able to move to my career goal stated above i.e. emerging Healthcare IT sector ? Should it be programming or computer networking or something else ? and little specifics of those skills and how to go for that ?

more specifics would be to develop IT infrastructure for the purpose of supporting medical education, clinical research, healthcare delivery in hospitals. not in medical devices...but rather business level IT work. something like Mr. John Halamka of Harvard has done...

very awesome talk of Mr. John Halamka at University of Newcastle giving complete details of IT use at Harvard Medical School and associated Hospitals.

http://www.cetl4healthne.ac.uk/CETLPlone/milestones/visit-of-john-halamka-chief-information-officer-harvard-medical-school/

though Healthcare IT is still in early phases even in US and Europe...but its sure that when i will enter the playground, it would have matured enough...and also i would like to focus more on learning open source software and technologies as open source is the future and is the definite answer of cost reduction specially when it comes to implementing IT in a sector as big as Healthcare)

Since i am just a starter, i want to move ahead with full guidance so that i don't end up wasting my time....any suggestions will be og great help to me.....

Hope that the expert people of this awesome community expert exchange site will be able to guide me....

Thanks a ton in advance

Answer 1

There's a big difference between network admin and programming, business analysis or desktop systems support. Without knowing what you want to do, it's hard to recommend specific skills.

Even within programming, the skills are going to vary depending on whether you want to do embedded systems development for medical devices, or business applications for end users on PCs.

If you don't have a more specific goal than "IT" in mind, it's hard to recommend specific skills.

Answer 2

Hey Doc,
Networking will do you little good -- wiremonkeys are a dime a dozen, and there's not that your specialized skills and experience will really bring to the game. Coding is where it's at*. Learn to code, and then start working on an unfulfilled need in EMR, clinical apps, or something else that interests you.

*Duh, I'm at Stack Overflow -- of course I think coding is the bomb.

Answer 3

I would say it probably depends on what you want to work. If you want something that helps during a surgery probably you need fast responses (C, C++, Assembly); for managing stuff you can use any language that has easy integration with databases (C#, VB.Net); if you want to have a web-based application then go for Java, PHP, Ruby. Or you can ignore what I said above because you can write almost any program with almost any programming language.

Answer 4

You must decide, sooner or later, whether you like to be a programmer, a software or systems architect, or a consultant. It sure does help if you get some hands-on experiences working in both fields, medical and computer science.

My experience is that with a experiences in both fields, you might get more job offerings as a systems architect or technical consultant, especially from bigger companies.

A currently hot topic is "Ambient Assisted Living" which deals with light-weigh ehealth services, such as elderly care etc.

Answer 5

If you wish to work at developing systems for the healthcare sector, and already have a medical background, you should focus on user interaction (usability) as well as general software engineering disciplines (project planning, different development models, software phases, etc).

Since you already know C, C++ and some other snippets, picking up the language of choice at your future employeer should not be a problem - your real asset is real-work experience in the medical sector which will be a huge benefit when designing and testing systems because you simply know how systems are used (or not used).

In short, work on bridging the gap between the medical world and the software world instead of switching between the two.

Answer 6

Have you looked at SQL at all?

It's a good common denominator for a lot of IT work.

Answer 7

As a doctor you might be able to answer that yourself. It really depends on what your goal is. Do you just want to work in IT for a hospital or are you looking to make improvements on current medical infrastructure?

I would imagine the greatest benefit to health care would be in creating new medical devices, but that would need some engineering. I think this would apply mostly to devices used in hospitals though and improvements could probably be made instead on the hospital software and workstations (like the nurses use). You should sit down at a nurse station or review whatever software you use and ask yourself if you like it. Does it help you do what you need to do.. could it be better?

As far as general It work I would guess hospital IT staff spend their time making sure network devices are running properly and vendor software is installed on workstations. There is the user account, security, and typical administration functions of course. This would bore me greatly as a programmer.

I dunno if you work for a hospital or private practice but check out what is used there and find out what you would be interested in dealing with. Im sure you could get an interview with a hospital IT staff member and chat with them about what kind of stuff they deal with usually.

Answer 8

Our current project manager is a former surgeon who fell in love with software development when he got involved in a project at their hospital years before. He had experience as both a developer and a systems analyst hence.

Having said that, you have a great advantage of knowing the "problem domain" well (e.g., healthcare), and helping analyze your specific problems and turn them into software solutions will make for great practice in systems analysis work.

I agree about SQL being nice, but you might want to check out the systems analysis career path and see if it's your cup of tea.

Answer 9

The critical factor in Healthcare is probably its mission-critical-ness. Banks and hospitals are 2 institutes that have a very high risk factor so you might as well learn to mitigate those risks early on.

As a doctor, I assume you depends on certain tools working well for you everyday right? Like if those heartbeat monitor would stop working out of blue, a certain chaos would surely ensue. Software and IT is a tool that would drive the business forward faster but in this case, your dependency on the tools is rather critical, so I'd suggest if you're gonna be into medical and heatlhcare IT, testing and quality assurance will be the most important thing to get right first.

The easy way would be to learn to do unit testing early on and put extra effort to keep your code in good programming style. Then focus on the topics of quality assurance. Some networking knowledge will also help if you can manage to pick them up along the lines, those that comes to my mind are fault-tolerance fail-over clustering all those stuffs. But in all case, you must learn how to build a dependable software first.

For mission critical application, you simply can't have bugs so learning to do tests early on will definitely help down the line.

Hope this helps!

Answer 10

I would say make web-based applications (either in-house or hosted (watch out for HIPAA)) for medical offices/small clinics, since you probably know first-hand what should be done better.

That you are a MD will carry a lot of weight in the sales process.

I recommend getting a good blog going that focuses on IT for the doctor, from privacy issues to office automation, patient records, etc. This would let you get a good idea of what people are looking for for their practice.

You may also want to go into sales of IT systems as a manufacturer's rep, specializing in specific market segments such as obgyn offices and outpatient clinics. I think your being an MD would definitely allow you to talk to the end-user and decision-makers (doctors all) at their level.

Also, you might want to ask this advice to small consulting firms that specialize in this sort of thing. They may want to use you, or at least will give you general directions.

As an aside, I work for a health insurance co and the coding positions are currently being outsourced, so I'd be careful about that.

Answer 11

man...this website is the best i have ever seen in my life...

such fast and awesome replies....

i am amazed.....

Answer 12

Check the job openings at Healthcare IT providers like McKesson and Cerner and the like, plus actual healthcare providers that are known in the profession as forward-thinking on IT issues like Mayo Clinic. Those job listings should give you a pretty good feel for the current "pulse" of their development, marketing, sales, management, etc., for the next six months to a year. What they want can change quickly, like in most of the IT business, due to "buzz word of the month" phenomena. Speaking of that, watching what the big C-level magazines like "Fortune" are talking about in IT can also give you ideas, but you have to be careful.

Disclosure: I used to work for McKesson building imaging systems, but I left them long ago.

Answer 13

I worked for about 5 years in medical software on charting software and related software. I would recommend that you don't get into the technology side of things. You don't want to have to put up with doctors thinking they know everything about technology....

On the serious side, you might look at something on the interface side of things if you are interested in how the software will related to the actual practice of medicine. If you need to build your own prototypes I would recommend learning something web-based like PHP, C#, Javascript, and SQL. The future of charting is heading to the web where practitioners can access a patient chart from anywhere with Internet access.

If you are getting into something on your own, I would look at expert systems. That realm has really fascinated me. Applying Bayesian logic to medical decision making would be cool.