How do I find these people?
June 8, 2009 11:00 AM Subscribe
I am about to become a first year medical student (YAY!). I am trying to figure out how to get involved in projects dealing with healthcare and IT. Are there any good online resources to finding this type of information? Or should I just start randomly emailing companies?
I have worked on an EMR project for about 1.5 years and have some good experience in that, but I would like to now become involved from the medical side, as that will be my future career. It would also be interesting to work with people who develop new software or hardware for the medical community.
I have worked on an EMR project for about 1.5 years and have some good experience in that, but I would like to now become involved from the medical side, as that will be my future career. It would also be interesting to work with people who develop new software or hardware for the medical community.
1) rokusan is right: medical school is basically supposed to kill you, and if that doesn't residency certainly will. "Extracurriculars" aren't really a huge part of medical school the way they are with, say, law school, business school, undergrad, etc.
2) If you do insist in pursuing this crazy path, just talk to the IT department at the hospital to which your medical school is attached. I'm sure they'd be happy to talk to you. But you might consider talking to various deans first; there may be some way of getting credit here, if you can come up with a compelling program and they're willing to work with you.
posted by valkyryn at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2009
2) If you do insist in pursuing this crazy path, just talk to the IT department at the hospital to which your medical school is attached. I'm sure they'd be happy to talk to you. But you might consider talking to various deans first; there may be some way of getting credit here, if you can come up with a compelling program and they're willing to work with you.
posted by valkyryn at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2009
I'm not totally clear what you know from your EMR project or how it's different from what you envision the medical side to be. The medical side is learning to use a system and putting/pulling data into/out of it.
I disagree with the above posters, many medical schools encourage community participation and research among their students. Med school should not "kill" you for the first few years at least. Life gets harder as it goes.
Rather than try to crack into the literature by yourself, try to get in touch with the relevant dean of your medical school and ask to speak to some researchers at your new school working on the topic. While there are open-source developments of EMR, much of the software and hardware development happens in the private sphere.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:14 PM on June 8, 2009
I disagree with the above posters, many medical schools encourage community participation and research among their students. Med school should not "kill" you for the first few years at least. Life gets harder as it goes.
Rather than try to crack into the literature by yourself, try to get in touch with the relevant dean of your medical school and ask to speak to some researchers at your new school working on the topic. While there are open-source developments of EMR, much of the software and hardware development happens in the private sphere.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:14 PM on June 8, 2009
Response by poster: I've basically already done a year of med school in my masters program, so I definitely know what I'm in for. I'm not looking for something fulltime, maybe just something where I can work with somebody once a week or so.
posted by senseigmg at 3:59 PM on June 8, 2009
posted by senseigmg at 3:59 PM on June 8, 2009
Response by poster: I worked on implementation and training physicians/nurses. I'd like to go into something along the lines of development, and making it easier and more useful for healthcare workers to use. Also, I'd love to be involved in testing it on portable devices (new iPhone...).
posted by senseigmg at 4:03 PM on June 8, 2009
posted by senseigmg at 4:03 PM on June 8, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
Don't take on "in addition to my studies" work for awhile until you realize how busy you'll be, especially after the first couple of years.
posted by rokusan at 11:59 AM on June 8, 2009