Medical Informaticists ... Get Crazy - Make a Real Difference!

In my Biomedical Informatics Journal Club on Thursday, we had a very interesting conversation regarding an article about the Chinese using XML to help build a medical records system. Our instructor said the article didn't seem to reveal much that wasn't already known. This lead to a discussion regarding the conservative nature of many academic and research environments.

Now, I have spent years in both university and entrepreneurial/corporate settings. In many ways, academics and research are very different from commercial environments. Businesses focuses on money, products and services, customers and, if large enough, shareholders. Academics and research center on solving problems, knowledge, sometimes only for knowledge's sake, and transferrence of ideas.

In either workspace, liberal or conservative views may prevail. Innovation is not necessarily pursued. Many people are content to do things the same way, over and over again, without improvements in efficiency, productivity, technology, etc.

To address significant advancements in technology and information science, an entire discipline has evolved to apply these progressive areas to medicine. One of the challenges of medical informatics is to take intellectual and technological ideas and create practical applications that contribute to the advancement of medicine.

I believe in continuous improvement, whenever and however possible: Personal improvement and professional improvement. I also believe in successful execution of ideas. True improvement requires both visionaries, with the freedom to think in broadstrokes, and operations experts who are supported in their efforts to bring ideas to completion.

I was raised in a very creative home with an artist father and a writer mother. Vision came easy but I have had to work very hard to become a person capable of follow-through and accomplishment. I have gained a very serious appreciation for the team effort required to complete any projects of significance.

I am really enjoying the synergy between my job, my classwork, and my personal growth occuring at this point in time. What fun!

STAND UP FOR GODSAKE! or How to Keep Working on Informatics Even When Your @$$ Hurts!

Past a certain point, the only way I can go on working is to stand up at my desk.  I tilt the computer screen upwards and have three boxes that I arrange to lift everything to my height.  I put one large box under my keyboard and two smaller boxes under my mousepad and mouse.  Sitting, I feel awful and know I'm doing damage to my body.  Standing, I can continue.

Tonight, we are doing our first online class for Internet and Health Informatics.  No matter what, doing any work after work seems like insanity.

Okay, back to business...

... I'm now returning from a several hour journey into health informatics, I am overwhelmed with the work we have been given. 

Technology is wonderful.  It puts a plethora of information at our fingertips immediately.  However, our brains are not much further advanced than cavepeople so the level of concentration it takes to rub two sticks together has to be applied to a bunch of little, teeny, tiny marks organized into representational fragments on a page that need to be recognized, interpreted, translated, processed, internalized, analyzed and the analysis communicated to meet the requirements of this class.

In all honesty, I will need to take an estimated 3 additional hours to work on these assignments.

What I am learning is that the people who create communications are often out of touch with their audiences!!

Go figure!

Artificial Intelligence Article: An Artificial Intelligence Program to Advise Physicians Regarding Antimicrobial Therapy

For my Biomedical Informatics Journal Club I read the article listed above in order to make a presentation tomorrow.  This was great companion work to the Medical Informatics class.  It was about an antimicrobial therapy consultation system. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seeks to mimic/approximate the reasoning techniques of an intelligent human.  I think that is facinating.  Tonight, we learned that the average population is reading at a 5th grade level.  Therefore, conceptually, AI has the capability of demonstrating greater intelligence than the majority of the population.

As with consumer medical health education, the methodology of this therapy consultation system seeks to present information in formats that are familiar to the user.

1-7-10 Posting

Hi All,

This is my first attempt at blogging.  I am inspired and plan to learn a lot.

Karma