Ahh, loans and the great northwest! this is the life ;-)
i have considered the option that you mentioned of having a practice and performing informatics work on the side, possibly as a consultant. i am also more curious about the field. i toy around with the idea of applying for a rotation in informatics, but i'm still not sure what field in medicine i want to go into (leaning toward neurology right now, but having a hard time seeing how neuro fits in with informatics)
anyway. My interests lie in a couple of areas, again very vague. I am interested in data management and ease of use issues. I am a fourth year student right now. I see a lot of attendings who have tons of potential access to health information through their pda, but very little real implementation. One will us patient tracker, one will use mdcoder, one will use epoc, one will use medcalc... but very few use more than one app; and, as always, apps never talk to each other. e.g. why can't epocrates calculate the dosing for pts on vancomycin who are in renal failure (medcalc + epoc/mosbys/pdr). the data is available, but not interchangeable between programs.
i am also curious as to how tablet pcs will affect things, will they lead to a greater incorporation of a paperless office? this to me is an ease of use issue. pda's are too small and difficult to enter large amount of text. desktops/laptops are too big to be really efficient (not to mention cost of setting up an entire office with pcs everywhere). would rural physicians benefit from having 1 tablet pc and a wifi network vs pc's in every room.
i haven't done much programming since high school. (>10 yrs ago) i have thought about getting back into it, but just haven't had the time.
this is a long, vague message and not a single consult has been performed. i would like to organize my thoughts a little more, but that will have to wait until later.
