Post: #1

Hello guys this is my second post. I was hoping some of the skilled IT guys in the forum could contribute.

I'm currently in medical school in Mexico and I'm about to finish school. I only have like 18 months left before graduating. After that I have to do one year of social service for the country. (this can go from being send to a god forgotten shit hole with 300 indians, to doing research in my city).

After being rotating in different hospitals and seeing patients I have realized or seen a glimpse about the practice of medicine. My days are filled with lots of boring paperwork, and the interactions with the patients are shortlived. A few days ago a professor in my school gave a data about big data and data mining in the context of preoperative surgical safety.

I was amazed by the information and I wanted to ask here if its difficult for a physician to do a career change and do something in big data industry after graduating med school (I will be graduating at 24).

p.s: I have already emailed the guy so I can see if I can do research with him in bioinformatics.

Do any of you know anything about the field, how easy is to get in? What are the credentials? How is the salary? Can you do the job location-independent? Does it lend itself for entrepreneurship? Do you think I would be in disadvantage for being a physician.

Post: #2

In the usa passing med school gives you a lot of intellectual credibility, but I think physician starting salaries are going to be better than most bioinformatics starting salaries, there are masters degrees in bioinformatics which would not pay what a MD makes.

A masters or PhD in Bioinformatics would get your something but a PhD would be a lot of extra work, maybe you can build a specialty on your own without an additional degree, for instance become the foremost expert on, IDK, something like optimal use of antibiotics after surgery, and be a specialist in that branch of information?

Maybe there are research fellowships or residencies where you combine medicine and IT.

Post: #3

I'm currently studying in Mexico not in the US. And the salaries here for specialties offer a not so good ROI for the amount of time you have to invest. Plus the paperwork thing in medicine is really a soul sucking task.

I think I didn't expressed well. I was talking about the field of big data. Not about bioinformatics per se.

Post: #4

I know a doctor who loves computers and he now is the IT administrator at a medical school. I'm also aware of a doctor who started up a tech company to deal with gaps in the market he spotted while working in hospitals.

If you have proven computer skills (such as a programmer's portfolio), then you should be able to network into a health IT niche.

You will need to teach yourself to code and bust out some apps.

That said, if you are going to be servicing IT gaps in the health industry, you should probably have some clinical experience under your belt so that you can understand your market. If you don't have that clinical experience, you're not much more than another IT guy.

Post: #5

Don't think of it as a career change. Scott Adams (Dilbert) once wrote something like, "The way to get rich is to either be the top 0.01% in the world at one thing, or be in the top 10% of two or three things and figure out a way to combine them."

How this applies to you is, you're already a doctor. Don't look for a career change from doctor -> big data analyst, look for a career change from doctor -> doctor + big data analyst. Fortunately for you big data is going to be HUGE in the health care industry. Algorithmic diagnostics, genetic screening, metrics... It really is impossible to overstate how much opportunity there is.

A little more than two years of school and social service is not a long time. Suck it up and power through, while keeping an eye on companies that are doing interesting work in the field of health care + data. Work as a doctor for a while, and think about how big data can improve how your hospital functions. Then make a leap to a company that strikes you as having a great business model, or start your own.

That's what I'd do in your shoes anyways. Sounds like you're in a great spot with a lot of opportunity ahead of you.

Post: #6

And if you can take any electives related to Statistics, math, bioinformatics, computers whatever. The more you know about numbers and programming, the more you'll be able to have not just an idea of what niche's need fixing, but HOW to fix them.