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Switching from Another Industry to Engineering/CS?
WomensHealth asks: "I am a physician, but contemplating a career change perhaps 5 to 10 years down the road. In addition to medicine, what I've always loved is computers and technology, and I think I have a pretty good appreciation for both. What tips could computer industry insiders offer to one who is willing to pursue an independent educational path towards a career in a Computer Science field? MIT's OpenCourseWare seems well put-together, though one can't get a degree using it. How can an old newcomer break into the industry?"
I switched from molecular bio to software development, but I did so starting in 1997. First as a tech writer, then I taught myself programming - although I always had an interest while in high school. A few lucky breaks, desperate interviewers willing to take a chance, and now I do dev work full time.
I think it was easier when I did it, especially with how low hiring standards were during the dotcom rush. Now you'd face a lot more competition, not just other job candidates, but the whole outsourcing thing as well.
As an MD, I imagine you could probably set your own work schedule - so I would make the transition slowly until you get to the point where you can sustain yourself. As for training, others here can offer better advice - I always have been and always will be one of those who just teaches himself.
As a Canadian citizen and US greencard holder, I can say that I've not noticed any inferiority that you appear to be implying in Canadian healthcare. In fact, I've been treated immediately at an ER in Toronto for a minor injury that would have cost me an entire day at Yale New Haven.
One popular way for MDs to break into the industry is to go to related fields where medical knowledge is being used in the context of IT, such as Medical Informatics. For example, at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics the majority of faculty and scientists hold MDs or are MD/Ph.Ds. You don't need to obtain a degree per se; as long as you can show that you know what-you-are-doing(tm). Do a post-doc at an informatics department. Talking to the IT people at your hospital can help. Start playing more with computer hardware and programming languages. Implement and deploy IT solutions that assist in your medical care. Your colleagues having trouble with their nifty new handhelds? Take a look at them over the weekend. Not happy with your new-fangled patient tracking system? Talk to the developer and analyze the database.
There are tons and tons of existing resources available both in print and online that you can use to learn the stuff you need. An MD is already a terminal degree; unless you are looking for academic/faculty computer science positions, it is not entirely necessary to have to go to school for IT at this time.
As far as the market is concerned, there is always interest in people who possess both a human-oriented and computer-oriented skillset; especially for places that are full of one-kind-but-not-the-other. (Like in a setting where everyone is a physician but they don't know IT, or a group of IT people who want someone who understands the biomed field).
Defnitely. I have a friend who used to be a nurse and the combination of IT and medicine is a *great* niche. Hospital infrastructure needs IT, you could be a very well paid consultant to public and private healthcare providers.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
The lawyer's style answer - only to address the original question - would be dishonest here. If you ask how to get to some address you would probably appreciate mentioning that a direct route is suicidal because of a gang war in progress. Or maybe you'd like that omitted, as something that you didn't ask in first place?
I can tell you it isn't the easiest road and requires a bit of luck, but you can do it. I did it. I left medical school after 2 1/2 years because I realized that I was miserable and bitter and plain didn't enjoy it. It was the best decision of my life and now I get up every morning and enjoy going to work. That is a wonderful feeling. I am currently a software developer for an academic institution in the NE. I primarily code. Am I worried about be "outsourced"? Yep. Am I going to tuck tail and run from a job I love or not encourage others to try it if they are interested? No way!
Your perspective is a bit different, and my guess, your switch may actually be a bit easier, as you have a skill set that can be leveraged quite successfully against IT. Bioinformatics is a huge field right now and still growing as the healthcare budget is this country (USA) is growing by leaps and bounds and things like HIPAA make data management and security top priorities at hospitals, academic medical centers and patient care facilities.
The real question is how you want to get involved with IT. Do you want to be a coder, project designer, high level software architect, project manager...the list goes on. Understand up front that your salary in IT is probably not going to be competitive with what you can get with an MD, but being happy with what you do is a huge fringe benefit. Just plan accordingly.
I can't tell you how many people told me I was nuts to be leaving medicine. A vast majority honestly have no concept of what "real" medicine is like...they only have a dim view of what is presented on ER or in the movies.
Anyway, back to your situation. With an MD, you could probably start by sliding into informatics quickly by doing a fellowship (and don't worry, it is nothing like going back to residency from what I've heard) in informatics. A lot of the schools in the NE have new growing programs. You will tend to focus on designing solutions to tackle high levels problems. Consult on products and major installations of clinical management software. A good first resource might be the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). I've been to a conference they put on and it was interesting and quite a great place to make new contacts. The year I went (1999), data warehousing and mining was the big focus. My guess is this hasn?t changed much.
Really, I can't say much for what the industry is going to be like in 5 - 10 years...but I do know that I'll be in it. Just take your time now (I know...after what I've seen in medicine and how freaking hard my wife, a family practice resident, is working, you probably don't have much of it) and research it. Since it doesn't sound like you need to get out right away, you have the advantage of being able to plan your horizontal shift with a little more precision than I did.
As for me. When I left medical school I actually started working at the same medical school as an entry level help desk person assisting medical students in the student computer lab (very odd experience, btw) and then have managed to "move up" the ladder by just loving what I do and always trying to tackle new projects and learn new skills. Good luck. It may not be easy, but it sure is worth it.
The market is currently quite rough, especially to break into. After being laid off when a product tanked on the market, I've gone a few months without having a single resume responded to - and I have almost a decade of professional programming experience that was applicable to the jobs I've applied for (and my resume used to keep the phones ringing daily for months when I posted it - the market has changed a bit).
I've been spending the extra time continuing development on my personal code library and projects, writing open source code, and working on a few products that I expect there to be a market for when they're done. That's how I'd suggest breaking into the field as well.
You have a very special situation though - you know, or can find out if you think about it and ask your colleagues, exactly what one fairly wealthy niche market needs. What software would help you - as a doctor - work more efficiently? What software have you and your colleagues found lacking? There's your first project :)
It won't be easy, and you won't make money fast. My recommendation would be to start learning about computers and computer programming now while thinking about products. As soon as you feel like you can design a useful program and have one in mind - take a shot at it.
Use CVS ( or for Windows, WinCVS ) or some other revision control so you can keep track of all the code you write (I wish I had when I started!). Estimate for yourself how long tasks should take - track those estimates, and figure out why they were right or wrong. Document everything, especially the code.
Once you have a product you think is worthy for your target audience - use it yourself in your work. Then let some colleagues try it out. Fix anything you find wrong with it, and ask your colleagues for suggestions.
Then, set up a website, advertise it, and try to sell it - or set up a project on SourceForge and make it open source - whichever you feel more comfortable with. On SourceForge, you'll be able to enlist the help of other more experienced programmers and together tailor the product towards excellence. If you sell it and it's successful, you'll be able to afford to switch careers to full-time programmer/entreprenuer and just work on your business.
That brings me to another point - if you aren't currently running your own doctor's office, start learning business skills too. They're just as hard to pick up as programming skills - possibly harder for some. Figure out what you'll need to do to start running your own software company. Even if you decide to write your own software as open source and become an employee for someone else professionally, this will help you at the negotiating table.
What I would NOT recommend is dropping out of medicine, getting a BS in computer science, and expect doors to be immediately open when you g
I write code.
er, wtf is nuclear chemistry?
The study of nuclear reactions, where you take an atom and smash it to pieces. Nuclear chemistry gave us the ability harness nuclear fission and fusion, both for power plants and weapons (although fusion power plants are a bit tricky and only used over short time periods for research, and even then only rarely).
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Ok - MOST of us are thinking about getting a job which will NOT be outsourced.
.. bad bad bad idea
.. you're unlikely to get outsourced.
..
I'd seriously stay away from switching from an MD to a computer-sci
MDs got to be here
Its a GOOD thing to understand more about computers and software.
It's just a bad profession in terms of work.
Since you've probably got a LOT of medical school bills to pay - I would just start picking up computer knowledge on the side.
You will be better in your job understanding more.
First thing I would do is start reading about IT/computers. Pick your interest. Build a computer system at home and install the OS from scratch. Join a local user group. (in LA lalugs.org for linux user group.)
Goto the health care industry info conference
(I forgot the name of it, but it's once a year, and they do have a number of doctors there).
Oh - here it is
http://www.himss.org/ASP/index.asp
understand HIPAA
read about computer security
( securityfocus.com is good )
seriously, there's a lot of good stuff to
learn - BUT don't switch careers - that's just
crazy
good luck
more commonly known as Nuclear Engineering, not Nuclear Chemistry.
Repeal the DMCA!
Mills College, in Oakland, California, has a set of graduate programs for people who have a degree in a field other than computer science and want to go into CS, either to change fields, prepare for a PhD program, or do interdiscplinary work. With bioinformatics, protein folding, medical records, etc., there are great opportunities for someone who knows medicine and CS.
Slightly off-topic, but being from Ontario originally, my opinion is not that you need more doctors, it's that you need more doctors to service the remote regions of the province.
From what I understand, there are lots of doctors in the Toronto area, and very few in the more northern places like Sudbury, North Bay, Thunder Bay/surrounding region and other smaller communities. Doctors don't want to work those areas (despite subsidies from the provincial government) because living in those places tends not to be as pleasant, and there isn't as much money to be made.
-- Joe
"You can use computer science skills to jump to the head of any field if you are good, for computers have the potential to make paradigm shifts in any profession."
Like what? If you are interested in doing R&D work then there is more opportunity in medicine that com sci. It also pays better and does not require overtime. Not only that but you could actually be doing things to save people from death and suffering.
In this field there are basically few options. You become a network guy who gets beeped at all hours of the night, a programmer who gets yanked like a puppet by the marketing wanks, or a project manager who kisses ass all day long hoping to get the programmers to actually do some work while lying full time to the marketing wanks.
This is a field where the overwhelming majority of all projects either fail outright or get abandoned. There is no sense of accomplishment and no sense of appreciation.
It's a sucky field no matter how you look at it. It sucks as a peon, it sucks as a middle manager, it sucks as a CIO.
War is necrophilia.
Here at BU, we have this program called the Late Entry Accelerated Program LEAP where people with non-engineering degrees can get their masters. As far as I can tell, most people in LEAP start off in a few essential undergrad classes, then go pretty quickly onto the Master's track, not wasting any time.
I think our engineering program is pretty good. Our Photonics Center was just recently built (1996) so we attracted tons of exceptional professors but still have some pretty bad ones. We have some nice labs too. I think it's worth checking out, especially in a few years.
Here's the main page for our College of Engineering.
You can combine both. This is from the uni I attend. As far as I know there is a real shortage and therefore a demand for people who have a knowledge of both medicine and Computing Science. Could be the thing for you
Our diversity is our strength
I second that. After my residency, I did a fellowship in Medical Informatics. It is a great way to combine both field. The National Library of Medicine funds 18 training programs in the field. Check out this website. I know work in part clinical, part implementation/research position and am very happy. Given the current interest in IT in medicine, and the unique problems of adapting IT to physician workflows, the job market is on the upswing. Good Luck!
= 9J =
I have a Ph.D. in biology and recently transitioned to a programming job at a major pharmaceutical company. I did this at a time when the market was absolutely flooded with programmers blasting out of the popped bubble. In order to accomplish this I had to be willing to start at the bottom (a low paid contractor) in lieu of demonstrable programming experience, I had to be an excellent programer (and willing to work hard and prove it), I had to combine all of my skills together into a coherent whole, and I had to get a lucky break.
I considered many of the training options that you have and that were suggested in other posts. My plan was to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer as proof that I wasn't a complete technical idiot, do some work on an open source project related to the field, and go from there. I got my lucky break before I took the certification exam, but I believe that it was basically a sound plan.
My science background turned out to be a perfect match for this job. Since I excel in both fields I can tackle problems that no ordinary coder would stand a chance at and no scientist has the time or programming skills for.
As I am now in a position to hire or influence the hiring of people, here are some things I would be looking for if I had your resume on my desk.
- A body of programming work (open source projects or just personal projects, but something I could look at and probe you for knowledge on)
- Some kind of paper proof that you might know what you are doing (Java Certification or some other comparatively difficult certification, a masters in computer science, etc)
- Claimed knowlege of a variety of technologies (Java, XML, HTML, Web Services, J2EE,
.NET, etc). The actual mix you would need would depend a great deal on the actual job, but you should show breadth if possible.
If I then interviewed you I would be looking for things like:I am not trying to sell you on programming for the pharmaceutical industry. This was all just intended to give you a real-world example and to inspire you to find your own niche.
dhk
Work for the federal government. The pay may not be as sexy as private industry was during the dot com boom, but I've had a steady job for 6 years now since I got out of college, good raises every year, flexible hours, relaxed work environment, etc. I can guarentee you the government isn't going to outsource it's IT to India. ;-)
I've spent some time lloking at the Open Courseware stuff. And although my MIT degree is from many years ago, I do have one.
What you see in the Open Courseware looks like a sampling of handouts ("lecture notes"). You'd have as much chance learning engineering from this material as you would learning surgery by reading a textbook. The missing element in both, of course, is interaction with a teacher who can tell you how to really do it, or who can explain how things work in real life. The Open Courseware is a simulacrum of education.
And with the job market in CS being so tight (not just programming, which most posters are talking about, but the engineering, design, etc. branches) any prospective employer will want a real degree from a real university, not a study-at-home substitute.
Imagine this turned around. Imagine I said I'm looking for a career change, and I've always liked biology, I've read some Robin Cook novels, I've looked at the standard medical textbooks and feel pretty comfortable with all that, how do I go about becoming a physician. The standard answer would be "go to medical school."
Are you affiliated with any local or regional hospitals?
Knock on wood, but we're not outsourcing. Too many bad experiences.
Do you want to continue on in the medical industry? There are PLENTY of opportinities there. If you are affiliated with a local hospital, see about getting on one of the technology commities. They're usually the IT staff who work with Doctors/Nurses/etc to get technology into their hands. Then gradually make your move into IS. No degree necessary.
I cant speak for where you live, but there are tons of opportunities for the medical community folks to work in IT here.
I would recommend looking into the HIPAA security and privacy regulations, that impact the use and implementation of computer systems that are used to test (or develop) medicines, as well as regulating privacy issues for private-practice doctors and hospitals.
Issues that would have to be addressed include computer security, privacy, data integrity, and others.
Best of all, an actual degree in computer science may not be necessary - a graduate certificate, with credits in computer security may do the job. There are also certification programs in computer security.
I would recommend looking into medical compliance with data security / privacy regulations as a possible area for either technical (or policy) consulting.
I am not advocating giving up the day job, but if you could handle the work load / partition your hours, this could be a side-gig, and if it were to take off for you, you could either bring on subordinates, or make a full-time move later.
The original poster of this issue is invited to e-mail me directly.
Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com
Funny... this is more or less my situation, although I've advanced a little further. I hold an MD and have always loved computers and programming. I decided to enter the field, but instead of studying for a CS degree I decided to get a MS in Health Informatics.
Please don't listen to the SlashTrolls. This can be a very interesting field, and the majority of the people working in it are Computer Scientists. I have discovered that my medical background made me very valuable and useful. Clinical experience is VERY welcome.
I've also become a member of The American Medical Informatics Association and am currently a part of the Open Source Working Group, pushing for the embracement of Open Source in all things Medical.
If you want to ask some questions, please feel free to email me.
No
wtf is nuclear chemistry?
Nuclear chemistry is doing chemistry with radioactive materials. It doesn't involve smashing atoms at all, it is generally an subdivision of analytical chemistry as the major use is elemental analysis on very small samples. The growth of mass spectroscopy has basically killed the field as well. Hardly anyone studies nuclear chemistry anymore.
And as for there being jobs in chemistry, think again. The chemical industry has been hit harder than IT by the economic downturn. I haven't seen a posting for a chemistry job outside of the pharmaceutical field in months. Most of the companies are hoping not to go belly up.
Organicsculpture.com
clincal informatics or biomedical informatics. Both of these fields are in dire need of people with a combination of medical and cs backgrounds. My suggestions would be to look at Vanderbilt's biomedical informatics program . You would only need a few pre-reqs and it leads to a M.S. or Ph.D in the field. Further, they have a program that is specifically tailored for a M.D. getting into the field. Stanford, Utah, and Columbia round out the top schools in this field. Further, there is no shortage of jobs as it is still in its infancy!
I have to agree with what most are saying here. The computer industry right now is in flux in a bad way. Almost everyone I know who had a computer/networking job in the last ten years is either unemployed or has taken much lower skilled jobs at half or less their original salary. I've managed to hold on to my job (with a reduction in compensation over the last three years). I'm sure lots of other people here on /. can tell you the same. Jobs are being outsourced in droves to foreign countries (India is most often named), and what used to be one of the best industries to be employed in has rapidly lost its luster and demand. For years, before the computer/networking boom of the last decade, there were only two industries that were pretty-much guaranteed to be profitable career choices- Medicine and Law.
These seem to have once-again reached supremacy, especially the lawyers- who seem to be the only ones making money anymore. If I was a doctor and looking for something else- that's where I'd go. At least the many years you spent in school will look really favorable when you try to get into a law school. I don't believe school is really all that important in the computer industry. Sometimes you need a degree to get your foot in the door, but once you are in- it is your experience and ability to adjust to an endlessly changing world that will make you most valuable. (And even that might not save your from having your job outsourced in a year or two.) A good, or at least decent, doctor or lawyer can always find work.
As a few people have suggested, why not try combining both? Someone suggested informatics. That sounds research based. EBM is about providing information to General Practitioners (mostly).
If your expertise is more face to face than research, EBM might be the go.
Try The Centre for Evidenced Based Medicine for an idea of what it's about.
You would of course have to learn a lot of CS first, but you might want to look for a field that is hiring (in case you don't read the "funny" replies) and where you can add to your skills base instead of replacing it. EBM might be just that field. You might also be able to get a start using your existing skills while learning about the CS side of things.
Good luck.
I'm a Chemical Engineer (Ph.D.) who thought I would go into medicine until my third year as an undergrad chemistry major. This was back in the 70s, but until my fourth year of undergrad, there were no major differences in the pre-med and pre-engineering curricula. The liberal arts school that I attended didn't award degrees in engineering, so it was necessary to go to grad school for that, anyway. All chemistry majors were required to take mathematics (through differential equations) and some physics. When I changed my mind about med school, I simply added a few mathematics courses. I graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry, just as my pre-med friends did and went in a different direction to grad school, instead of to med school. Of course, all my friends are surgeons now, driving Porsches, and I'm not!
A lot of people are saying don't do it cause IT is a dead end, but bioinformatics is a very hot field right now. If you have an MD, I suggest looking into a graduate Bioinformatics program. Here is one link: http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu
Actually, the field that a physician with computer expertise would be extremely well-qualified for is medical informatics.
This is very, very different than bioinformatics or computational biology, both of which might use "supercomputers to solve biology problems".
Actually, there is talk that medical informatics and bioinformatics might be coming together. There is a relatively young field called pharmacogenomics, which is the study of how each individual's distinct genetic makeup affects how the drugs we take work.
Here is a PubMed link to an article about the potential for collaboration between bioinformatics and medical informatics. The abstract is free on PubMed, but unless you have access to a subscription to the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the article will cost you $5.
With a little luck, and a few courses, I suspect that an MD might be able to get into this field without getting a CS degree. However, I am not all that familiar with hiring practices in the field (I'm more on the bioinformatics side), so it would be best to find someone in medical informatics to ask.
A particularly hot area right now (no guarantee it'll stay this way) is the management of clinical trial data. I get a lot of recruiters contacting me looking for people with this sort of expertise.
In medicine, the outsourcing game is just beginning. Medical transcription and standard back-office tasks have been moved off-shore for years. Now the high paid labor, namely doctors, are on the chopping block. Many radiologic studies are generated as digital images, such as CT, MR, and digital angiography. Standard film techniques are increasingly being done in digital imaging suites. "Teleradiology," the transmission of these images to a distant viewer, was an inescapable development. It was promoted as a way for smaller outlying hospitals without radiologists on staff to have more rapid interpretations or to allow university radiologists to give a second opinion on difficult cases. While it is occasionally used for these purposes, the technology mostly enables local radiologists the stay home and avoid coming to the hospital.
However, the birds are coming home to roost as hospitals, including major medical centers like the Massachusetts General Hospital, are now outsourcing the radiology jobs.
Currently, radiologists are among the best compensated physicians with salaries in the $350,000 to $750,000 range, not counting profits from their ownership of imaging centers. In our town, they usually are found in their waterfront homes, continuing to read X-rays and bill their fees from the comfort of the den. Indeed, there is a radiology imaging center near my office owned by a radiologist in Miami who has, to my knowledge, not been in the building for weeks. Expect a major change in this state of affairs, and rapidly.
Already, newly-minted radiology graduates have found salaries offered in practice have dropped about 50%. Further, partnership (an ownership position in the practice, imaging center, or an enforceable portion of the hospital contract) is as far-fetched as a balanced Bush budget. Junior radiologists will never make enough money to afford the millions in equity the senior partners have in the imaging center, yet their work and billings increase the value of the business. As salaried physicians, they are hired and fired at will by the senior partners, who were lucky to have entered the field only 5-6 years earlier. In our hospital, the turnover at the junior level (and these are the newest trained physicians, the most up to date on the technology) has been dizzying - 8 fired and replaced in the last 5 years - while the older partners, often without any special fellowship training in CT, MR, or interventional techniques, continue to rake it in. As offering salaries have dropped, well ... let's just say that several of the replacement rdiologists could be 'outsourced' with a definite improvement in quality.
[Actually, this trend to shuttiing out newer hires from any hope of partnership has been apparent for about 10 years, before outsourcing became a issue. The "RAP" (radiology, anesthesia, and pathology) services were bundled in with the hospital compensation in DRG-based reimbursement systems. These specialists hold contracts with the hospital which is the value of their practice. The older partners, signatories to these contracts, have been loathe to share the spoils, preferring instead to hire newer trainees for 3-5 years, promising partnership at that time, only to offer it under onerous terms or not at all.]
The next jobs on the plane will be the pathologists. In the last 10 years, hospital pathology groups have banded together to form large regional or national practices, such as Ameripath or Quest. But slides which are sent to Utah can just as easily be digitized or FedEx-ed to India, Russia, or Europe where there is an abundance of low-paid medical talent. Other hospital based interpretive contracts, which are extremely lucrative for the contract-holders, should follow rapidly. I see echocardiograms and ECGs going next. As a matter on fact, I think I am going to speak to the hospital administrator about this tomorrow.
Medicine + IT + Government = Veterans Affairs The VA needs Doctors with IT degrees to ensure FDA compliance of new IT systems and to support HIS/RIS ops. Also, their systems are old and will need expertise in the future to migrate to newer platforms. And the pay isn't to shabby.