Earlier this week, I was featured in a student life profile in the Logan University quarterly Tower Magazine.
As a chiropractor who loves technology, I've found a hopeful career path in health informatics and began pursuing a second master's via Logan's online program on the data analytics track. The field of health informatics is broad, encompassing everything from billing, coding, and EHR implementation to telehealth and data analytics. In particular, I've really enjoyed learning a bit of Python and data visualization, but there is still a lot to learn.
I continue working part-time with World Spine Care and hope that I can apply what I've learned to streamline our data collection. This role has made me appreciate the importance of measuring what matters, as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation does in their Global Burden of Diseases study.
I'm excited by the possibilities of technology helping address the increasing need for the rehabilitation of musculoskeletal conditions. Initiatives like Atlas from Sword Health help highlight the need for a bigger focus on low- and middle-income countries that could benefit from easier access to first-line care.
As a (former) podcaster and with a title like Director of Communications, it's disarming to be on the other side of the interview. I was impressed by the comfortable and casual nature of the initial call with the interviewer. I felt encouraged to tell my story and found myself slighly amused by the angle of the questioning (I no longer consider myself a professional ballroom dancer and haven't enjoyed a long trail run in years, but for some reason they really wanted to hear more about those activities).
I was surprised by the first draft, however. There were quite a few factual errors and the piece certainly made me sound more interesting and accomplished than I am. I was glad for the opportunity to correct the record.
Unfortunately, something made it into the final version that makes me uneasy, but not because it's untrue. While I'm optimistic about my future career steps, I'm deeply uncertain about which direction to go.
As mentioned in the article, I would like to continue working with World Spine Care by shifting my focus to the clinical database and develop a complete data pipeline for our patient data. Currently, this would be a huge stretch for a number of reasons
- with 7 clnics in 5 countries, there will be a lot of challenges achieving interoperability with many different agencies
- I first need to gain a command of the current spreadsheet we use as a database and the full process our clinicians now follow
- I'm not sure that this is a priority or even necessary for the organization's goals (I'm making some assumptions that may end up being proven wrong.)
- Technically, any solution will be too large for an individual and involve many different skills I will need to develop (back- and front-end development, data analytics with SQL/Python, etc.)
In the meantime, I have collected a number of potential software solutions, mostly open-source. DHIS2 is a health information management system used by many national public health agencies, including Botswana, Dominican Republic, India, and some areas of Canada. Similarly, OpenMRS is an open-source EMR that is used by a number of ministries of health and by similar hoalth nonprofits, such as Partners in Health. I've completed the introductory course for DHIS2 and am currently taking the introduction to OpenMRS.
Oh, and one more challenge – I would have to find some way to fund my role as a full-time position. Maybe there are foundations that would offer a grant?
If nothing else, it will be a good opportunity to learn about these technologies and appreciate the challenges of developing software.