Career Opportunities:  Quotes from Physician Information Specialists

The following quotes were collected from physicians working in information roles in a variety of settings on the future needs for physicians trained in library and information sciences.

• I think there’s a great opportunity right now…  I really see this as a rebirth [of information science], with new opportunities and new ways of making itself very relevant for society.  Ricardo Pietrobon, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Duke University Health System
  

• Every single medical school or health organization needs people who understand information science, even if you’re a community hospital.  You need docs on your staff that can talk to the folks that are installing electronic health records and understand these issues.    And …in private industry, big Pharma, the medical device industry, the electronic health record industry, they desperately need people….. to work with the programmers & engineers and help them understand the extreme time pressures that people are under.  The delay of changing from one menu to another that takes a second may seem trivial to the programmer but to a physician, if you have to click through 20 screens for each patient, that kind of inefficiency really mounts up.   What they are lacking are people with the clinical gestalt of how things happen on the ground.  Philip Kroth, MD, MS, Assistant Director, Health Sciences Informatics Program Development; Assistant Professor, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center, University of New Mexico.

• The marketplace holds countless opportunities for someone skilled in both clinical medicine and information technology.  The recent IOM report strongly supports the use of emerging technologies to enhance the safety profile of our hospitals and clinics.  Across the country health systems are faced with the challenging task of implementing these complex systems.  Those with the interdisciplinary skill sets necessary to facilitate these efforts will rapidly become valuable commodities in the near future.  Jeffrey M. Ferrranti, MD, MS, Director of Computerized Patient Safety Initiatives, and Director of Pediatric Informatics, Duke University Health System
  

• Particularly with new initiatives at the federal level for electronic medical records, and making medical care more efficient, there’s going to be a huge demand for people who understand medicine and information science--- to be leaders, to be contributors on product development, to be policy makers.   Frank Davidoff, MD, Executive Editor, Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Editor Emeritus, Annals of Internal Medicine
  

• I think that the opportunities in library science and information science or genomics, and bridging together new forms of communities of practices, published medical literature, clinical data to the point of care, that’s going to be a very exciting area, so people who properly train for that are going to be in good shape.  Mark Frisse, MD, MBA, MSc, Director of Regional Informatics Programs, Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, and Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University
  

• Many of us are struggling with implementation of electronic medical records, increased use of electronic documentation, order entry, closed-loop tracking of drug ordering, adverse event recording, all those sorts of things…   there’s ample opportunities for graduates from that program to get involved in with real world applications that could improve health care in the country.  Michael Bookman, MD, Medical Director, Ambulatory Care and Clinical Information Systems, Fox Chase Cancer Center
  

• All these software products have problems in their user interface design that would benefit from clinicians being involved early, rather than at the end stage, when everyone’s annoyed with the design.  Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, MD, Cantab, Consultant, The Advisory Board Company

• [Having information skills and training] puts you in an amazing position to do a variety of things in the world of information science, informatics, clinical computing, leadership, education, whatever…    There’s going to be a huge demand for people who understand medicine and information science to be leaders, to be contributors on product development, to be policy makers.  It’s huge and very attractive…   Founder and President, electronic medical resources company

• If you have expertise in computer sciences and medicine, you can do everything from helping product development, to doing research as it relates to the application of technology, go into nomenclature issues, interoperability, how do you structure information and the knowledge management side of the field, to actually helping implement complex systems in a clinical setting.  It’s pretty open!  Government Official involved in healthcare informatics