So as it says on my about page, I went from being a professional programmer to a med student. Given that I love traveling so much, I’m still not sure what I was thinking giving up the next several years of my life… but here I am.
It’ll be interesting to see what this blog will look like and who the audience will be, if any. I don’t know that there are a lot of people out there with interests in both technology and medicine, and whether readers with expertise in one will mind sifting through posts about the other. Of course, there is a whole field of inquiry into bioinformatics, so maybe the combined interest is larger than I realize.
I already have a few programming posts in mind, which should be up shortly. I’ll also have lots to say about med school, but we’re still on holiday break and I’m enjoying the vacation.
< there is a whole field of inquiry into bioinformatics
More to the point, there is Biomedical Informatics, with a national research society (the American Medical Informatics Association, http://www.amia.org) and well-developed Master’s and PhD training programs supported by the National Library of Medicine (see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ep/GrantTrainInstitute.html). The National Cancer Institute supports a major effort to develop and disseminate open source software supporting cancer research and care (the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, https://cabig.nci.nih.gov). Other NIH institutes such as the NHLBI are also beginning efforts specifically targeting the development of information technology in healthcare research and delivery. Particular areas of medicine such as pathology and radiology have had substantial subspecialty areas related to software and systems development for some time.
Other relevant links:
Health Informatics World Wide
HITSphere — health IT weblogs
LinuxMedNews — health IT with an open source perspective
Good luck with your training. If your interests in software persist, you will have an opportunity to combine those with your medical training for postgraduate work. This is an excellent time to have those interests.
Wow, I never expected to get so much information so quickly. Thanks, Jim! I’ll definitely check these links out, along with all the other resources on your site.
Another strong interest I have — coming from hospice — is palliative care, which also seems to be commonly associated with oncology. So this gives me yet another reason to seriously consider cancer.
As for postdoc work, I know it’s an option — but tagging a PhD onto an MD would have been something better chosen before starting, since most schools will pay your way if you’re willing to do the combined MD/PhD. (Of course, I notice you’re an MD/PhD yourself and working in academic medicine too, so you already know that. :))
Hi Scott! You might not remember me, but I was looking through old travelling e-mails and found yours. So, just popping in to say Hello.
We met in Nicaragua, and spend some time together in Granada (I am the french Canadian girl)
Anyway, I am happy you made it in med school. I wish you the best of luck !
Mel xx :o)
Thanks!Much needed information supplied