Do Your Research Before Doing Your Research

Recently I had an idea.  Something just clicked when I least expected it – of course!  Why didn’t I ever thought of that before?  A simple research question.  A simple way to answer it.  Helpful contribution to knowledge.  I began to assemble the idea by writing it down, into outlines and paragraphs, thinking through all the possibilities.

Then it occurred to me to use PubMed.  It turns out that although I didn’t “ever thought of that before,” someone else clearly did.   It was a good paper.  So there was that.

Every now and then we all stumble upon an idea so good, so exciting, so cool that we want to pursue it and make it our life’s goal – a research focus, a project, a new company.

Just be careful that someone else might have had that epiphany too.  Last year. Find out what happened to that idea before starting yours.

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Howard Chen
Vice Chair for Artificial Intelligence at Cleveland Clinic Diagnostics Institute
Howard is passionate about making diagnostic tests more accurate, expedient, and affordable through disciplined implementation of advanced technology. He previously served as Chief Informatics Officer for Imaging, where he led teams deploying and unifying radiology applications and AI in a multi-state, multi-hospital environment. Blog opinions are his own and in no way reflect those of the employer.

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