The Radiology Society of North America (RSNA) Annual Meeting is a place to expand your knowledge base, both by taking a deeper dive into your core interest and by getting your feet wet a few new skills.
If informatics is something you’ve been interested in but need a good way to get started, then the RSNA offers some solid opportunities for beginners. Continue reading
Posted in Technology and Informatics
Tagged informatics, MACRA, policy, Quality Improvement, RSNA
If you have taken overnight call, you quickly develop a sense for the emergency department and the inpatient floors. In my institution, radiologists develop hypotheses on how inpatient orders are placed.
For instance, sometimes it might seem as if inpatient radiology exams follow some sort of circadian rhythm. The data look to confirm it: we see the infamous “x-ray bump” in the early morning, with the increase in CT start more gradually but last later into the day.
Also, are weekdays and weekends any different? If so, how?
With a little coding in Python or R, one can gain a lot of insight into how our referring providers’ lives intertwine with our own. Read the full story in my new post on Radiology Data Quest.
Radiologists have a day job (or a night job, depending on your precise definition of “radiologist.”) Many people want to learn the syntax of a computer language, while some want to keep up on existing skills.
If your goals are similar to mine, these might help. Now these are not ways to learn to write code (I’ll write about that later), but ways to brush up on existing skills.
Here are five things to help keeping up your coding skills:
Most radiology practices can be improved by better use of technology Continue reading
The May 2016 iteration of FHIR… has arrived. Most notable among its new capabilities: support for the Clinical Quality Language for clinical decision support as well as further development of work on genomic data, workflow, eClaims, provider directories and CCDA … Continue reading
When I was in 8th grade, my English teacher wanted to give everyone a book to take into high school. She had a cardboard box full of various books. There was literary fiction like Toni Morrison. There was a memory aid for American presidents. But I came to class really late that day, so by the time I went up to the box, there were only a few books left. I had the great choice between Billy Budd (dryest. book. ever.), Atlas Shrugged, and this book called Getting Things Done.
I picked up Getting Things Done because Atlas Shrugged didn’t fit in my bookbag. It would be years before I realized that self-help productivity books is in itself a major genre of nonfiction. At the time it just didn’t make sense why anyone would need such pathologic level of compulsion to keep things organized.
In a way, healthcare has spearheaded the forefront of universal connectivity with common objects. In the world of Big Data, healthcare is now uniquely positioned to take the next step.
A few years ago, I needed hand surgery. Shortly after checking in to the outpatient surgery department, the helpful nurse attached EKG leads onto my arms and chest, and a pulse oximeter to my finger. The monitor next to my bed flickered and came to life. Then, colorful telemetric and oximetric tracings in a nursing station computer reflected an exact copy. A record in the hospital intranet traced my wellbeing overtime. Wireless connectivity allowed an extra pair of eyes to watched me and to ensure aberrant flickers do not go unnoticed… Continue reading
This article originally appeared in American Journal of Managed Care.
Posted in Technology and Informatics
Tagged Big Data, informatics, Innovation, internet of things
Starting a new residency is tough. With new opportunities come new challenges: balancing between learning a new discipline and getting involved in scholarly endeavors can be stressful in its own right.
A sound advice I heard as a first year resident was to hold off unnecessary involvement early during the residency. A free license to procrastinate.
However, procrastination implies a postponing of something inevitable, not to mention that research and quality improvement projects are parts of the residency requirement.
So the question remains, when does it make sense to get involved? And how? Continue reading
Posted in Residency Productivity 'Hacks'
Tagged Education, Extracurricular, informatics, Radiology, Research Projects
This is the third of a series of three posts on open source software. The discussion is geared towards non-programmers who – more frequently than expected – becomes involved in an open-source project.
Open-source is a complex paradigm, but sometimes it is also thrown into an academic abstract or grant proposal without much thought. Previously I presented a basic description of open-source and discussed some common misconceptions about OS software.
If you were involved in an open-source project as the clinical expert (i.e. not the programmer), you are likely the team member best positioned to bridge this gap. This post focuses on how you are uniquely positioned to contribute. Continue reading
This is the second of a series of three discussing open source software for non-programmers interested in informatics.
A previous post discusses what you can expect from a software project when it is “open source.” However, the concept of OS is not so clear cut.
This post aims to clarify five commonly held beliefs about open source.
Posted in Technology and Informatics
Tagged Computers, informatics, open source, Radiology
This is the first of a series of three discussing open source software for non-programmers interested in informatics. I try to stay as accurate as possible while avoiding jargon.
Open source (OS) has been a popular phrase not only in software engineering but also in radiology. Open source is closely tied to DICOM, the most popular format in medical imaging, in part because many frameworks available to manipulate DICOM files are open source.
A thorough discussion on OS is available here. If you are more into an abbreviated 3-minute introduction, stick around.
Posted in Technology and Informatics
Tagged Computers, informatics, open source, Programming, Radiology, Technology
