How to get into the tech field from medical school?

[deleted1077853]

Hi all. Rising MS3 here. I've always been interested in tech (self-proclaimed Apple fanboy here) and I've always had a fascination with tech companies and their health initiatives, Apple being the first that comes to mind. That's the general direction I'm looking to get involved with coming out of medical school/residency. Ideal goal is to work with companies like Google and Apple in their health and wellness initiatives. It's a lofty goal, but something I'm really interested in doing. I've had zero "educational" technology and computer experience; I was a biomedical sciences major in undergrad and came straight to medical school so I don't even have that going for me lol. One idea I have is to learn coding and app development, but of course med school is a full-time gig and it's difficult to allot time for that. Any advice is much appreciated! Cheers!

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[deleted1076141]

I'm not sure how relevant coding/app development would be for a physician at at tech company. N=1, so take well salted, but a friend's sister is a pretty high up tech exec, and the impression I got asking her is that physicians are recruited more for medical knowledge than tech knowledge.

 

[Redpancreas]

Hi all. Rising MS3 here. I've always been interested in tech (self-proclaimed Apple fanboy here) and I've always had a fascination with tech companies and their health initiatives, Apple being the first that comes to mind. That's the general direction I'm looking to get involved with coming out of medical school/residency. Ideal goal is to work with companies like Google and Apple in their health and wellness initiatives. It's a lofty goal, but something I'm really interested in doing. I've had zero "educational" technology and computer experience; I was a biomedical sciences major in undergrad and came straight to medical school so I don't even have that going for me lol. One idea I have is to learn coding and app development, but of course med school is a full-time gig and it's difficult to allot time for that. Any advice is much appreciated! Cheers!

You're correct that medical school is a full-time gig and if you have not learnt a language yet, it's unlikely you're going to learn from scratch in medical school or residency. I took Python as an introductory class in college and still struggle with even the simplest things.

What you may find interesting is completing residency, developing your core competency as a physician first in whatever field you choose, and then approaching the companies like Epic for example and saying hey, I have these skills. When you're established in your career, you can then decide how much time you want to invest in your medical career vs. your entrepreneurial side gigs.

 

[Lem0nz]

Look at the ABIM’s fellowship in clinical informatics. Report back with further questions.

 

[wysdoc]

Some pathologists specialize in informatics as well.

 

[Redpancreas]

Look at the ABIM’s fellowship in clinical informatics. Report back with further questions.

Report back with information too and would be interested to hear anyone's experience who did this. Was it helpful?

 

[Lem0nz]

I did a masters degree in CI during residency. Did not pursue the fellowship cert because I was doing clinical fellowship and couldn’t meet the reqs. May circle back as surgeons are insanely underrepresented (like you can count them on two hands) but are some of the most prolific users of tech in the space.

Can comment on it maybe tomorrow but let’s see what OP comes up with.

 

[deleted1077853]

I did a masters degree in CI during residency. Did not pursue the fellowship cert because I was doing clinical fellowship and couldn’t meet the reqs. May circle back as surgeons are insanely underrepresented (like you can count them on two hands) but are some of the most prolific users of tech in the space.

Can comment on it maybe tomorrow but let’s see what OP comes up with.

Couldn't find anything on the ABIM website for Clinical Informatics, but ran across a Clinical Informatics Fellowship with the ABPM (Clinical Informatics – American Board of Preventive Medicine). At first glance, it looks interesting but I feel like it entirely up my alley.

Lapse of judgement on my part for not including this in my original post (my apologies), but I feel like a lot of my fascination with the tech industry is focused on app development, UX/UI design, and of course contributing my knowledge which Katie_e above alluded to. I'm searching for that sweet spot that sort of allows me to do work like that. I was just confused on whether that required me to work for an extra certification (web development, coding bootcamps, etc.) and whether it would be feasible to at some point post-medical school.

^^^ Should have mentioned all that in my original post lol but apologies once again. Lightbulb just went off clearly. Nonetheless, I appreciate your's and everyone's input and looking forward to hearing more perspectives and feedback!

 

[Lem0nz]

What you’re asking then is going to depend on your residency. There is almost no route to structured teaching in programming in any residency, at all. Maybe you can do it on dedicated research years in a surgical residency but that’s a stretch and would not make you a competitive fellowship applicant.

So, excluding surgery, it depends on how much of your free time you want to dedicate to learning programing as a hobby. From my own experience where we did python and SQL classes in my masters, unless you live and breathe coding for pleasure, very few residencies will offer you enough free time to do this concurrently while also having enough free time to just enjoy your life as a person.

Now, after residency is an entirely different story and you could do some work in that space and possibly also get some asynchronous structured education (and have money to pay for it) which would be my recommendation. May or may not be what you want to hear. But programming is a lifestyle. My best friend does it as a hobby and it... kind of destroyed his marriage because when he wasn’t working his normal job, it took up so much of his time because it’s quite time intensive to do well. That’s n of 1, of course, but the time commitment for *good* programmers is quite real.

Just lending your expertise as a physician on a team developing applications and technology rather than coding is much different and the informatics route is the path of least resistance to do that in a reproducible and structured way.

There are a million other ways to get into whatever niche makes you happy but you’ll have to find or make them yourself. The main stream, reproducible ways to do what you’re asking I think I’ve described above.