Slashdot Mirror
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?"
How can an old newcomer break into the industry?
I'd recommend this...
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
1) Switch from Medicine to Computer Science
2) Move to India
3) ??
4) Profit!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
You might go into genetic research, although that will probably be sourced offshore, too.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I really hate to be so blunt - but where I'm from we're severely lacking Medical Doctors. Here in Ontario, we really need you people.
Please, stick with your current occupation. You're saving lives there, and I doubt you could say the same in an IT field.
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Go down to your local Fry's and buy a nice shiny computer. Use the computer to visit the GNU website and take a look at the projects that look like they need some help. Download the code and start working on it using Cygwin tools or Linux, if you've installed it.
Forget about making money in the industry, you're much better off getting a degree in plumbing, the pay is better and the hours are better.
I have been pwned because my
From someone who has been in the industry for 10 years: the answer is...don't. This is a dead end field now, especially with competition from markets that can support low wages and people willing to give away their work for free.
It was once a good field to be in, but has now become so devalued that I cannot recommend it.
Go ahead and do it!! Instead of doing something like certification courses (CCNA, MSCE, etc.) that might or might not be accepted, try and get into a MS degree program somewhere. And to do something like this is definitely possible... from where I worked at a couple of years ago, I had one person in my group who went from being a heart surgeon to a software engineer and someone else who went from a city cop to a chip designer. Sure, its not easy but at the end of the day, you will have what counts.
It's too late for me! I for one am looking to be out of IT in 5yrs. Seriously, why throw away a medical education for an industry of questionable future and even more questionable ethics and morality? In my opinion, if you sold real estate like software is sold, ou would be in prison. If you sold used cars like software was sold, you would be in prison.
my $.02
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If your training leads you to a career that can be done from offsite, that same carreer is in danger of being offshored.
There is no business difference between someone who telecommutes from India or Indiana.
comment directly in my journal
This is the first time I've seen a TROLL ARTICLE!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If you want to do some good, switch to politics instead and run for national office then pass laws restricting outsourcing.
Let's get real. Why should companies like IBM and HP be allowed to bid on government contracts when they have a large number of their workforce in IT sweatshops overseas?
This question is insulting.
How would you feel if you got the following question from a patient?
I am a computer scientist, but contemplating a career change perhaps 5 to 10 years down the road. In addition to computers, what I've always loved is anatomy and biology, and I think I have a pretty good appreciation for both. What tips could medical industry insiders offer to one who is willing to pursue an independent educational path towards a career in a Medical field? I'd like to start operating on people right away; Gray's Anatomy seems like a good guide, though I apparently can't get a license by reading it. How can an old newcomer break into the industry?
I keep seeing the above list each day, under different subjects. If you have nothing to tell, don't post anything please.
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.
I can't imagine going from something like medicine where you've got 8-10 years of college invested PLUS residency, into IT. Sure you could do it, and there are jobs that would pay you comparably, but the IT field is so unstable right now that it doesn't seem terribly wise.
Of course the flip side is that if all medicine gets under govermental control you may be in a much less lucrative job than you are right now. I think that if you're serious you should look at the programming/CS degree while you're practicing medicine and then apply both specialties by developing applications for the medical field. It's specialty work like that, where it takes somebody with inside knowledge to really know what is going on with the end result and not just the programming, that will be more difficult to outsource. Also the potential for true innovation from somebody within the medical field attacking programming is enough that you might secure yourself a position with a large company.
It would be a gamble any way you look at it. If you're really into it then find an online part-time CS program and enroll. Take a few classes over the course of many years. It will take you much longer to get the degree due to the changing nature of CS degree requirements, BUT... you'll know better by the end if you really want to leave medicine AND you'll still have the knowledge to grow from later.
CharlesP
wordtrip.com
I always thought doctors were supposed to be smart.
I thought the same about my fellow geeks. To wit:
Unless you got stuck being an anusologist, stay with medicine.
Anusologist? I believe proctologist is the correct term - google is your friend.
Actually, I think SCO could realy, really use a computer person who is also a skilled proctologist - that way someone would be there to remove Darl's head from his ass.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The one advantage that you do have is in-depth knowledge about a potentially lucrative customer niche: medicine. Consider leveraging that to specify, maybe even design software and systems to help medical people.
You might be able to code up some demos and do some usability testing, but (IMHO) you ought to resist the tempation to try to implement production systems. Quality is important, and experienced developers automatically deal with issues that you wouldn't even think of for years to come. Hire quality people and let them make you rich!
I hate to mention politics, but it has allot to do with the current problem.
I voted for Bush, but he has done nothing for the middle class workers losing jobs to outsourcing sweatshops overseas.
This is the reason why Bush will not be reelected.
Try a medical informatics program. Google for "medical informatics program", and you'll get a ton of hits. Combines the medical degree and IT, and hard to outsource
How can an old newcomer break into the industry?
It seems plenty of other slashdotters have beat me to the "Move to India" suggestion.
But realistically, the best way to get into the computer/tech industry is to get into one of the high profit vertical markets. Great examples of these are Enterprise Storage (IBM, EMC, HP, Sun, Hitachi), Supercomputing (HP, IBM, SGI), maybe even VOIP or biometric security. Additionally, consulting services which are wrapped around the aforementioned markets are particularly lucrative.
You basically want to avoid like the plague any job which can be easily outsourced to India or another cheap labor market. Programmers, Call center workers, WWW operations are a few examples.
Also, dime-a-dozen certifications like MCSE and MCP should be avoided as they are usually costly for you to get (if you are paying for them yourself) but provide little or no real world benefit to you.
Just my two cents.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
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).
I think it's funny how the story creator, "Dr craig hall" (check out the email address) has a username called "Women's Health!"
Likely he's an ob/gyn (or possibly just weird), but it's still funny...
I'm all for it. The typical slashdotter probably wouldn't be though. But bear in mind that many of the slashdot crowd are IT professionals, a single occupation within a greater sphere that has seen significant job losses. The sad reality of computers these days is that if you want to do something with computers, the best way to get a job is to know something about what you're doing with them.. I believe this was said by Joel of JoelOnSoftware or some such semiluminary.
Well, as a physician, you've got some specialized knowledge that will come in handy from time to time. I'm sure you've heard plenty about biotech. I've seen some of these DNA "computers" and chips, and it seems very wasteful. Grow specimen, extract and treat dna, splash on a grid with transverse dna's and call it a computation. Then record the data and throw it away. This is just one example of the biotech oddities that seperate the field from your average HTTP server. There's all sorts of places to work. Merck, Eli Lilly, etc. Having a MD with some working knowledge of computer programming will get you further than having a degree in computer programming and a working knowledge of human physiology.
Your best bet is to start writing programs for yourself, and maybe design a few gui tools to put on top of them. Basically build a working portfolio that demonstrates you can write in perl, SQL or whatever, then apply. Or maybe you will find that a few of your own programs are marketable to your friends. I hear many doctors enjoy PDAs and related software. If your a general practicioner, you might try thinking about what sort of software would make your practice faster, more reliable or more cost effective. By all means, read up on HIPAA and the sorts of laws regulating how software should treat patient data. Maybe buy a pda and a wireless reciever and learn how to interface software from the pda to a database over the wireless in a safe, secure manner.
Learning to program is not that difficult. Some languages make it more obscure than others, and some languages are built for more specific domains than others, but here at KSU we only really have three "how to program" type classes of varying difficulty before you begin to learn how to specify WHAT you should program, be it a database, an operating system or a 3d renderer.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I would recommend becoming an airport skycap, a washed-up athlete, or possibly the CEO of a poorly performing US company. That's where the money is these days.
Have a look.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
1. Learn to program
2. ?? (*see below)
3. Profit!
*In your profession, you probably can find a need that because you've worked in the trenches you can fill better then any programmer could. Programming is not something you can learn overnight, but is more like a talent, like playing the piano. Figure out the niche that you can fill, and make a program to handle it. Make it open source (GPL) and start using it. Talk it up among your doctor friends and see if they are interested. Others may join in, and start asking for changes that you haven't anticipated. At this point you can start charging for enhancements. Since you are the expert in this program you are the one contacted. Get some rightups in medical journels and you are on your programming way.
An understanding of computers on it's own is worthless. It is the understanding of computers and how to make use of them to DO SOMETHING USEFUL that is the rare skill. This is what the readers of Slashdot don't understand.
If you have a knowledge of Medicine and Computers, then you use the COMBINED knowledge to advance the state of the tools that doctors use. If you have a knowledge of physics and computers, you help design models of how the universe works. If you have a knowledge of how accounting works, then you design software that helps bring Enron to it's knees. The point in this is that CS and IT is WORTHLESS unless you understand what the technology is used for, and as such, in the CS field you have as much value if not more than you did in you own field. This is because you UNDERSTAND the field you could help. The appropriate area of work is called "product management."
There is an old phrase: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. This is the way with computers--if you have the knowledge of how things SHOULD be done, and help make that a reality, you solve the problem for a lifetime for everybody involved.
People like you ARE the ones making progress in the use of computers, not those that graduate in CS. Why? Because you help embody the knowledge of what you have learned into the systems that will be used in the future.
Erik
IT is leaps and bounds above other industries precisely because it is hard to define.
A software sales critter essentially sells ideas and unmeasurable claims. A product which not only does not exist, but also has not been designed!
They promise the V8, 4 wheel drive, A/C, automatic transmission etc. for $20000 and deliver a POS (such as a Yugo as an example of a small cheaply built car) for $40000, and defective to boot. In real estate you can go out and look at the lot, the nieghborhood and the building plan and decide if that is what you want.
The ephemeral nature of software means that any charlatan or con artist can have a field day. And then charge outragous sums for bug fixes called upgrades. Which is one reason I am getting out, I no longer want to be associated with such practices, which are accepted as the norm.
Not all capitalism is immoral and/or unethical, just as not all socialists are lazy. It is just that IT is the worst I have found to date, and I see no good way to improve the situation.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If you enjoy computers then play with them. You will lose your joy if you become a professional. I like eating ice cream but I don't think I'd enjoy eating ice cream if I worked in an ice cream factory.
This business is harsh. I don't know what medicine is like but the IT industry is not pleasent anymore. It was at one time when the field was filled with brilliant innovators but now it's just shit.
Finally any doctor I know drives a nicer car, has a better house and a better looking wife then any computer professional I know.
Don't do it, you'll regret it later.
War is necrophilia.
I know I'm going to make some enemies with this post, but I seriously urge you all, who think that it's bad that jobs are going to India, to consider the benefits of offshoring IT jobs.
By having cheaper labor do the same work and produce equally good or better products and services is a good thing. Remember your college economics class? Comparative Advantange? It's important for a nation's economy to do what it does best. Just as the poster asked whether or not she should get into the computer science field, I would say, if you like it and you think you will be better at it than medicine, then by all means, go for it.
By having people do what they do best, it allows for specializiation and the way corporations work the way they do today. Specialization allows more output from the same input by increasing the productivity of workers. Similarly, specialization applies to the global level and when nations specialize in one service or good, that is better for the entire global economy. Just think back to the 70s and 80s when the auto industry was screaming bloody murder over the import of cheaper and better made Japanese cars. Americans learned to respond to that. Similarly, the currently shrinking job market in the IT field is not something to be afraid of. There are plenty of problems that require solving in the technological sciences involving computers that currently displaced employees can help solve and this is an overall benefit to global society. Yes, there will be a short-run hard hit to people at home, but allowing free trade is a good thing. And in this case, it's the free trade of jobs in the computer industry. But remember, in the long run, it's in the best interest of everyone.
I am an American medical student with several engineering friendss (pre-meds and engineers have lots in common at the undergrad level). When we contemplated the same question, we devised this: if you want to combine the two fields, please consider prosthetics research. Recent advances in neuroscience, materials science and computer technologies are making this field an up-and-comer over the next two decades.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
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.
Given the huge role that technology plays these days in medicine, I'd think that you might do very well to combine your interests in medicine and computer science. For one thing, it'd be a hell of a lot more interesting than tossing medicine altogether and becoming a database administrator or a mid-level systems analyst or whatever. No, you ought to learn enough computer science so that you can talk the talk and walk the walk, and then get involved in developing hardware and/or software that docs can really use to improve health care.
Radiology is perhaps the most obvious field where computers let docs see and do things that they never could before. I'd guess it's also probably the field where you'll find other docs with an interest in computers. You might do well to hang around with some of those folks and see where things are heading, and how they got started. But there are plenty of other fields as well... microbiology, chemistry, pharmacology, hospital IT systems, medical imaging, etc.
If you decide that a degree will really help you, then when the time comes you might consider taking a sabbatical from medicine and pursuing that degree full time. Or perhaps you'd do well to find a position at a university hospital where you could study CS as an employment perq.
Sorry, your experience is anecdotal and deosn't give you enough information to judge accurately. Yale-New Haven is hardly a representative benchmark of all US emergency rooms. Here in Los Angeles, we have County-USC: you'll wait in line for hours there in a room full of undocumented immigrants waiting to be seen. Go to the Northridge Trauma Center and you're treated quickly-- if you have insurance. If you don't (and you're critically injured), Northridge stabilizes you and sends you to County-USC. I suspect you're used to getting the same treatment everywhere and didn't know that YNHH is where only the poor people go. Poor people wait in line here.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm coming from the other side...currently BSEE doing chip design but recently started a PhD is biomedical engineering, specializing in medical imaging.
If you were to pick up the programming skills (you could get into image registration, segmentation, computer-aided diagnois, etc...) or the EE skills (you could work on the detectors for digital x-ray systems or CT front-end design) you could apply them to imaging diseases of which you already have a fundamental knowledge. This is very powerful and missing in a lot of the research I've seen.
One last word of warning: I would think one reason you got you MD was to help people...I've personally found that a huge portion of the high-tech industry is just out to make money, regardless of the effects it has on it's workers, the environment or the betterment of society. This is why I'm getting out.
The poster was asking about a career change not about the financial incentive to do so Doing something some one loves is more apt to produce results than to do it for the money. Most people in the Medical field will tell you often the money really is not there. Perhaps they are looking at a career change for retirement or any number of other reasons. Just answer the question rather than imagining what the motivations are...
First, you need to do what you like to do. I think a warning about the tough times in computing is fair. However, the employment situation is much better for harder skills (i.e. CS versus IT, research level CS versus UML/OOP/J2EE). I think there's still plenty of room for highly educated and motivated people.
Actually I saw a program at Dartmouth for a dual MD and PhD in CS (odd combination, but definitely useful). You may also be interested in the field of computational biophysics. It's all of the same ilk.
The article poster said he was interested in CS. Are you interested in research or business? There are a lot of different routes you could take. Do you want to deal with biomedical engineers, biochemists, or lawyers? Frankly, you were way too broad.
Incidentally, for what ever it's worth. You may get a kick out of http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/">Stuar t Kauffman's work. He's regarded as one of the best in the field of complexity research. He also has an MD and no PhD. He taught himself quite a bit.
Some good Math and CS books:
"The (New) Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science" by A. K. Dewdney
This book is a great advanced introduction to all of the major topics of CS (except neural networks). This book has sections on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Relational Algebra (database theory), viruses, operating systems, data structures, and more. This is a great book for you.
http://aduni.org/
This site has lectures from an entire CS curriculum online. It was an experimental program designed for people like you.
You'll need a good introductory book on programming. Since you're probably not worrying about polishing up your resume, and you seem to be more interested in learning, you should take a look at:
"The Little Schemer" or "The Little LISPer" by Daniel Friedman.
If you really want the traditional route, take a look at "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel. It's free and most people recommend Java or C++ as a good first language.
If you're really daring, try the "Perl" book by Larry Wall or "Learning Perl" by Randall Schwartz. Although, I think Perl is a horrible first language to learn. It's way too exotic.
Take a look at "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens. It's a great book on the internals in Unix.
Learn assembly language, it's a poor man's computer architecture course. Try to make a small graphics program (draw some primitives [lines and circles]) with assembly. Of course, you can't do that in Windows (unless you call some Win32 libraries or are VERY good.
"First Order Logic" by Raymond Smullyan
This book essentially covers the mathematics of automated theorem proving. Armed only with this, I was able to read papers in the field. Some knowledge of basic logic (prepositional logic, maybe some slight familiarity with predicate logic) is required. I'd also recommend a whole lot of "mathematical maturity". I recommend any of Raymond Smullyan's books (technical and popular science) sight unseen. Even his thesis (Theory of Formal Systems) was pretty good.
Any book by Howard Whitley Eves or Robert R. Stoll
Both men wrote books on matrix theory (linear algebra and more) and set theory. Actually, both are top-notch textbook writers and many of their books are available from Dover Publications.
Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson (or by FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] if it's really old) and Calculus by Michael Spivak
The first book is the closest thing to a competent Calculus for dummies. It's almost 100 years old and it's a classic. Incidentally Mr. Thompson was an engineer, not a mathematician. The second book is notoriously rigourous and is almost an introduction to analysis. I don't know if you really care about Calculus. You probably won't
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
I wish I had never taken my engineering degree. It is the biggest regret of my life. I'm doing some consulting and have a few business ideas, but it's very difficult to get funding for what I want because of the climate for tech. My alma mater's graduating EE class last year had very few employment opportunities, and what few were there were either extremely low paying or extremely demanding field work (16 hour days 6 days a week). A friend who's a vice-principal of a school wanted me to come in and talk to her students last year about technology careers, and I told her I couldn't conscionably do it because the climate is so awful and unlikely to change that I'd recommend either medicine or trades instead of what I took.
There are tons of jobs for doctors here in Canada and the US. Unlike the vast majority of engineering and CS jobs, medical diagnoses will never be outsourced. Heck, take a small business course and get creative with what you've got now and market your services uniquely as a GP or whatever else you want to do. Without health, we have nothing. That's why your job is likely the fundamentally most important job in our society, and why doctors will be the last people on earth out of work.
Not knowing what your B.S. degree in (assuming you have one, of course, as it's not a requirement for medical school) you should consider graduate study in Biomedical Engineering.
Most certainly you'll have some undergraduate coursework to fill in, but you could go into areas such as biomechanics if you want to get your hands dirty or medical information systems if you want something more on the IT side.
Information systems, medical imaging and image analysis, biosignal analysis and processing, there's a pretty wide range of computational and traditional engineering focus areas that would benefit immensely from your experience.
Biomedical Engineering is still a growth field in this country, particularly in the R&D. Being an M.D. would make you uniquely qualified for clinical research, though that's largely a need outside of the information arena.
If you are interested in this path, talk to some universities that offer degrees and take some of the introductory coursework via satellite programs and get yourself admitted. A M.S. degree will be sufficient to get you into the job market and you can probably pull that off in about 3 years.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Guess what? She tinkered with her knowledge, became a midwife, explored a lot of different areas where she could legally do what she was interested in doing. Sounds an awful lot like non-degree compsci people, no?
The normal path isn't required to become a doctor any more than it is to become a software whatever-the-hell this guy wants to be. It is considerably harder in medicine, due to guild behavior, but I'm sure we'll see that develop in compsci over time as well, as it is becoming as vital as medicine to our economy.
I wonder if you're confusing "insulting" with "threatening."
I wonder if you're assuming MDs are divinity when they're not.
I forget what 8 was for.
There's some issues I read over and over...
"Programming! Programming!" - Any quality CS program is only about 1/3rd programming related. 1/3rd is theory, and the other 1/3rd is hardware architecture. Usually you'll have a few advanced classes which bring it all together (like operating systems design). A well educated computer scientist can switch languages with ease depending on the needs of the work and learn new ones quickly. In the CS world, programming is just a means to an end. I'm 1 semester shy of graduating with a degree in it and doing the programming is perhaps the least interesting part that I thankfully, spend little time in. I'm more interested in solving problems with *design* than typing away lines of code.
"There's no jobs!" - Yeah. Maybe if you don't have a CS degree which focuses on the *SCIENCE* part of it. There is a quite a demand for people in the engineering and scientific world who can design (as opposed to simply "program") advanced algorithms and computation software. Even if your speciality isn't scientific computing there is still a large number of jobs waiting for people with CS degrees out of well known schools in a variety of areas. IBM's making a big push for CS grads.
"*somethingsomething* IT! " - CS is *not* IT. Its like comparing the doctor's receptionist to the doctor. I'm not belittling the receptionist or the IT people - both the doctors and the CS folks need their records/networks organized and maintained with skill - but they do fundamentally different things.
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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.
From what I've seen so far, the advantage that India has over the US is that it is cheaper. Not that it is better. Not that it is equal. Just that it is cheaper. A small portion of my company has been outsourced to India. Like the Internet, we treat it as 'damage' and try our best to route around it.
Why not just hire a flock of interns in the US? It'd be just as good, and the accent wouldn't be there.
I graduated in 1998 (finished in 1997). Since then, I've come close to nervous breakdown twice (both, admittedly, in the same job -- my first), due to overwork and under-relaxing. Yes, I was young and naive; I didn't realise what I was doing. But the short of it is: I want out. The only issue I have with that is not knowing what I want to do instead. In other words: it's one thing knowing you want to get out of something. It's something quite different to know what you want to get in to. I don't know the latter yet; until I do, I'm staying in IT (the devil you know, and all that).
I've considered a couple of things, but they're either too short term (you physically can't do the job for more than 5-10 years), or require me to quit my job and go back to full time study. The former's not what I want -- I want something for the rest of my life -- and the latter isn't something I can afford to do, not without knowing for certain that I want to do it.
In short, unless you know what you want to do, and why you want to do it, I would very strongly recommend that you stay where you are. You could end up making your situation worse, not better, depending on the reasons for the change.
Computer programming is something you can learn to do adequately well in your spare time, sufficient to build small but very useful systems.
Software engineering is (or should be, the term is widely bandied around but not very meaningfully sometimes) the process of building large software systems on time, on budget, and to specified levels of quality and reliability - at least in theory.
Computer science is the theoretical study of computing - what they can and can't do, how long it takes to do it, and trying to make them do the things they can't current do very well! It's conducted at universities and research labs, mostly by people with or seeking PhDs. Much of it is almost a branch of mathematics.
If you're already a practising physician, 5-10 years from now it will be a little late for you to be considering becoming a full-on computer science researcher in a field that doesn't take advantage of your background.
You could certainly learn to become a competant programmer in your spare time, but it would take another degree and more professional experience to become a fully-fledged software engineer. As you've heard, there's a lot of doom and gloom at the moment about job prospects in that field, mainly because of the outsourcing boom. Who knows what the demand will be like in 10 years. However, demand for doctors is virtually guaranteed to increase over the next decade or two as the population ages, so I wouldn't be considering the move if job security is at all important.
If you are serious about a career change, I'd be exploring the possibilities of working on medical technology. From what I hear, doctors are notoriously clueless when it comes to information technology, so somebody who can translate between medical jargon and IT jargon is going to be enormously valuable and have a very interesting career, no matter what side of the fence they sit on.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
They preach to engineers that they should be well-rounded, and know a little bit of everything -- math, physics, yadda yadda yadda. But if you're joining late in the game, just focus on the important stuff:
For math, I'd definitely start with discrete mathematics. Work through it thorougly -- not only are its concepts like trees, graphs, recurrences, etc. immediately applicable to CS, but you should get a good feel for other elements of formal mathematics you'll need later, such as formal proofs and mathematical notation. If you really love discrete math after doing this, I'd suggest you pick up Knuth's book Concrete Mathematics -- but not many people would be ready to make that jump. Another branch of mathematics you might want to pursue is logic -- handy for AI, and it really puts you in a mindset you'll find useful in CS. (A shameless plug for my logic professor's awesome book is here.)
Then onto the computer science portion of our program: I don't know the extent to which you know programming, but assuming something minimal, start off by learning how to program in a scripting language. I recommend either Perl or Python (or both). If you're looking to apply your medical skills to computing, these languages are key -- in fact, today I turned down a job to hack on the Human Genome Project at my university. The preferred languages of applicants? Perl, C++, Java, and Python. So you'd score two of the four languages right there. Then, pick up a book on Algorithms, and start reading it (such as CLR). Hopefully, your brief foray into programming and your exposure to math by way of discrete and logic will make that read easy and enjoyable.
Where from there? Pick up a more widespread language, such as C++ or Java. Then pick a specialization in Computer Science that sounds interesting to you, and start reading about it -- such as networking, databases, computer architecture, etc. I can't emphasize enough how much a book can teach you -- a book can be all you need to succeed in many classes.
I know the above outline of what to learn is not found in most (all?) colleges. It's not what I'm going through right now at my university. But right now, off the top of my head, that's the best fast-track program I can think of.
Best of luck to ya,
shadowmatter
There seem to be plenty of opportunities to mix computers and medicine for someone with experience/knowledge in both fields.
I'd say if you are considering switching careers, combine an MS degree program with self-study. Academic programs offer contacts and structure.
On the very interesting, but smaller market, side: bioinformatics is a field that obviously benefits from education in both areas. Being highly proficient on both fields could give you a very cool research job.
On the vanilla, but much wider market, side:
- The medical industry is still lagging behind in IT. Most doctors are not computer-savyy, and this has translated in low IT spending and traditional, paper-and-people based solutions for a lot of things. Small to medium medical offices can be positively Luddite.
- There is a desperate need for good software that has not been, and cannot be, satisfied by typical retail software. Think custom applications, vertical markets. The few applications that exist own their respective markets and charge accordingly high bills.
- New regulations (HIPAA for one) and market pressure are forcing the industry in the US to do more than "catch up" and embrace technology much like financial institutions have done for a long time.
- HIPAA et al will not only force a lot of IT investments in that community; they impose new BIG requirements on the vertical applications that already exist. This opens the market to competition that can meet those requirements better and/or faster than the conservative choice (which may not meet them at all).
The difficult part (I believe) is on having medical knowledge and credibility, where a professional of that industry has an advantage. Being able to communicate with doctors, understand what they want and let them understand what they need. That's easier for someone who shares their vocabulary and frame of mind.
Team up with some geeks if you need to (to build an application, for example) and go into the market as a startup. Or knock on the doors of the more stable companies you find in that field.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
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.
Spark, meet tinder. Tinder, spark.
Now that that's out of the way: if you're considering a schooling method other than self-instruction, you're not going to be fit for the industry anyway, so don't even bother. Seriously - people go to school for things like IT and CS, sure, but just that won't do a thing for a person. CS requires one be always updating their skills; if you're just getting into the field at 40+ (I figure this number from the idea that you graduated college at 23ish, the spen 8 more years in school after that, plus whatever time you needed to become an established physician who is already considering a career change) and doing so by going back to school, chances are you've not got the right mindset to be successful in the field, especially considering the atmsophere of the industry for the last 3ish years.
Have you been under a rock for the last 3 years, I wonder? Seriously. I can't but almost consider this some sort of mockery of slashdot, and possibly simply a joke. You're a physician. You rob people of immense amounts of money (usually paid for by insurance). Your job is dependable - people will always get ill. You could live a comfortable live and spend your money on expensive gadgets and new server racks for your toys - and do it on your leasure, for enjoyment. But instead you'd rather make a pittance in your old age, at risk of being fired or dismissed for any number of reasons, so as to get to work long hours under unkind managers? It seems to me that the doctor tends to be at, or near, the top, in many situations. Seems a bit more preferable.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If it's what you want, do it. Fear not--I think the number of programming jobs in the USA will grow.
I, too, am a physician in the midst of changing my career to programming. I quit medicine a few months ago, just in time before my head exploded. I finally realized that I had never enjoyed medicine. My background is physics; I could never wrap my brain around medicine.
I'm learning C++. I'm considering game programming and medical informatics. The medical software I've used has been awful (just a hole to throw data into) and I know that I can make stuff that's much better. I'm going to make a software tool for managing chronic illness. However, game programming would be more fun. I think I could write game AI that would walk across the room and smack you in the face.
Would I be wasting my many years of medical education and practice? No. I'm like Dirk Gently: I believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Whenever I learn anything, I connect it to everything else I know. (Just today I noted that I could easily apply my medical problem-solving skills to assessing avalanche risk.) Also, my work as part of multidisciplanary medical teams will translate to working in programming teams wherein members have differing sets of skills.
Most likely I'll still do some doc-in-the-box stuff on the side to make money, at least as long as I feel competent.
You may want to start with a language class in Mandarin or Hindi...
Here's a medical analogy for you.
;/
The situation in the computer industry is like medicine would be as if every kid who had dissected some fetal pigs decided to hang out a shingle and become an obstetrician.
You're looking at replacing a secure, varied and financially extremely rewarding field with a field which is insecure, hypersaturated, and arguably can be done by someone with very little education.
Not only that but IS work lends itself to ruts. Wherever you work, you're going to be learning an API or a network system, and then you're going to be writing for or supporting that API or network, until you get another job, where you could very well be doing exactly the same thing.
If you're interested in spending your time in overcrowded cubicle farms full of stressed, angry, reclusive programmers who live in constant fear that their jobs are going to be given to retrained bricklayers from bloody Pakistan, you're headed in the right direction!
Oddly enough, I'm in a position now where I can run screaming from the bloated tech industry, and I'm back in college getting ready for med school.
The only way your idea is not utterly BONKERS is if you want to somehow use your medical skill to get into something like bioinformatics where the money is potentially gigantic for doctors who have technical ability.
Here's what the computer industry is like right now. You have a lot of people who are very experienced and good at what they do. Then you have numerous carpetbagging amateurs who have installed kiddie Linux a few times, are good at bullshit, and have wormed themselves into positions of responsibility. It's almost like a kind of Ponzi scheme.
That's much of the reason why the industry lost a lot of its credibility. That's much of the reason why the industry started asking "Why are we paying this yoyo $120 an hour when Patel in Calcutta says that he can get the job done for rupees on the dollar?"
Look very very carefully at this before you do it. You've got numerous people here-- who should know-- telling you things like "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." This is no joke.
Sorry to rant but I'm sure most of ya all know what I'm talking about
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I wouldn't recommend it... There's a great need for good physicians and once you start messing with computers for 60+ hr/wk - well let's just say that after the original excitement after a couple of months it becomes a pain - my dad changed to IT from a stat professor and that was his experience. I've always liked computers and I want to keep liking computers so I resolved to enter a non-CS engineering field instead and treat as a hobby - with your income as a physician you could afford to construct a geek's paradise - build your own network at home - maintain a couple of servers (WWW/POP/NIS/DNS/SAMBA - a DEC alpha, a sparc, an itanium, opteron,xeon) and you'll still have lots you can learn and can still enjoy computers.
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!
Computers are a really, really, really wide field, as are most. So what you need to figure out, if you want a new carrer, is what about computers instrests you. First, decide which of the major categories you like:
1) Hardware design. These are the guys that start it all, who make the circuts that eventually come into everyone's computers. This is engineering, specifically computer and electrical. It's all about circut engineering and design, simulation, and making it work in the real world.
2) Software design. The next step. You take the finished hardware, and implement the code that makes it usable. This is computer science and is all about writing, debugging and testing code.
3) Support. The final stage. Once everything is designed, out in the real world, and being used, someone has to keep it working. Stuff breaks down, and users can't fix it, so someone must support it. There really isn't a university degree for this, though CIS or maybe MIS would be the closest thing. It's all about solving problems with finished systems.
So, which appeals to you? While you can cross from one to the other, it's generally good to try and pick what you want to do and work to that. HArdware guys should work on an engineering degree, support guys should work on low-level job experience and certifications.
Now once you've picked a general area, you need to look at specifics. What particularly do you want to do. Like if you are a support guy is it networks you like? Computers? Server farms? A mix? I mean within each broad area, there's lots to do.
So, really, what you need to do first is take some basic courses, talk to people, read some literature, maybe get some friends to take oyu on job tours, but try and figure out what it is you like about computers and what you'd want to do. It, like most fields, is broad and there is plenty to do. Try and find the niche that is right for you, then persue it. This isn't 1999 where anything computer related would land you a job in 6 seconds, you need to get relivant skills and experience to what you want to do. So the first step is to figure out what that is.
First off I should mention that this is nothing more than a plug. Dalhousie university (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) has just started a graduate program in Medical informatics. Medical informatics is basically the science of using mathematics and computers to data mine medical information for useful results. This is particularly relevant to this situation since the ideal candidates for this program are people with a medical background. People who can look at the data and form some sort of understanding of what it means in the real world. I know at the moment Dalhousie is the only Canadian school to offer such a program though I do believe there are a few American schools offering similar programs. Beyond that I don't know who else offers such a program.
It is also worth noting that Dalhousie Comp sci has just aquired Jon Borwein who is one of the worlds formost experts in experimental mathematics and just happens to have a history with several of the developers of the Medical informatics progam. It is unclear if he will be involved with the program but he will certainly be teaching courses at Dal. Probably worth looking into.
= 9J =
"Health Information Science is the study of how health data are collected, stored and communicated; how those data are processed into health information suitable for administrative and clinical decision making; and how computer and telecommunications technology can be applied to support these processes." - UVIC
Health Information Sciences (HINF) is probably going to be a growth market in the coming years. With an aging baby boomers demographic, governments are going to be throwing more and more money at healthcare. As health needs grow, so does demand for information infrastructure. This is where HINF could be a good industry segment to get into. Up here in Canada, the government is throwing billions of dollars at health care these days, and it's only going to increase.
Since you're already a physician, you probably have a lot of domain knowledge that will be very useful when desiging software for the health industry. Having that domain knowledge is extremely valuable since you'll have a lot of insight in the processes, laws, and implications of the health industry.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
keep in mind most of the people I know aren't even getting the average.
That's especially sad since here at Lake Woebegone, all the children are above average.
As you will see from the other comments, life in CS sucks. I am a VB programmer with some minimal Linux skills (ducks to avoid rotten tomatoes). Yet I make more $$$ then most of the people posting here. Why? Because I am a chemist. I was hired by a Biotech company to work in their lab. This is "OK", because I have a chemistry diploma. They would never be allowed to hire a pure I.T.-er, because these guys belong in the IT dept. Yet I spend 95% of my time doing IT related work. I like my job and chances for getting fired are almost non-existent. They NEED me.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
is DON'T. Here are a few reasons why you really ought NOT to get a tech degree / persue a tech career: ... just for 10 minutes". As a tech, you're expected to save your neighbors from themselves continuously. ... as a CAREER path in this day and age, though ... you really don't need the hassle. You served your "8-years-of-hell" already going through med school; no need to repeat it with a career. ... but it's not seen that way these days.
:( Sure, I have Gray's Anatomy, have done dissection, and know what bursae are ... but guess what? That doesn't get me a damn dime.
... it was crazy.
* As an MD, your next-door neighbors don't really expect you to "just pop over and check out Bob's heart a bit
* As an MD, your time is respected (see above).
* As an MD, you're employable.
* As an MD, it pretty much stands that you're in a respectable profession with reasonable people. The same assumptions will not neccessarily be made in tech.
* As an MD, if the patient dies, people are typically understanding. As a tech, if you can't revive someone's 80086 to run Windows XP PRO, then YOU SUCK.
* As an MD, you'll see the field saturated with Indian and Pakistani folks. As a tech, you'll see the field cornered with Indian and Pakastani folks(1).
* As a HOBBY, computers are great and are quite rewarding
* If you're looking for some Mad Money / Retirement Money, look elsewhere. I personally ended up coming back to school for advanced degrees rather than go work in Texas for $28,000/year as a professional.
* Respect, respect, respect. MD == "professional". Engineer/IT Person == "professional" also
G'luck. I personally wish that I'd have done what you did (med school and kept computing as a HOBBY) rather than the other way around.
N
(1) I have nothing against either; I worked for/with Pakastanis in a mom-and-pop shop in the mid-90s
One of my clients/partners sounds like he could be you. :-) My partner is really anoyed about the materialistic extremeties in todays medical world and he thrives to evade it by that combination of strategies: True Continous Medical Education (you see, I know the buzzwords allready :-) ) and part-time dealing with a field he has a hobbyists interest for. Just the right thing for you too, I'd suggest. ;-) who knows what he's talking about and also has some business and social skills. Note that I'm originally an artist and also come from another field than CS/IT. When you start a business, know where your power lies and learn to pass on the parts that you're not good in, even if you would like to do everything yourself. That's one part of success. Best of luck to you.
He's a top-notch dermatologist and has worked as a consultant for the most advanced imaging system available for dermatology - one that can automatically diagnose dermal anomalies such as skin cancer. He's got a company that expertises in medical E-Learning for medical personell and works for various medical organizations and the pharma industry.
I'd suggest that if you want to study because it interests you, get used to the idea of studying for fun. When you've got your degree you can still decide what to do with it.
On the other hand, I'd suggest you either stick with your jobs which has something around a bazillion advantages over CS and IT or you combine both with medical consulting for pharma companies and other organizationhs in IT related medical projects. Or medical related IT projects. You could even do it parttime until your business is going.
As for my client/partner, he hasn't got a CS degree but he spends 2 days a week dealing with the field and it's geeks (me). His Webdesign is horrid and I'm having a hard time talking him out of it, but his medicine skill and expertise combined with my computer expertise gets us to sit together with the really big boys in pharmacy, who have so much money they light up their chimney with 500 Euro bills.
Bottom line:
Get into _one_ field that interrests you in CS/IT that you think could go well with what you've got allready. If you've got the brains you won't need a degreed - don't forget: medicine has been around since 10000 years, but computerwise we're still in a stone age, with maybe 100 years of knowlege in the field! It's all about brains and what ideas _you_ come up with. Technologies change and evolve on a half-year basis. Not a good enviroment for a usefull degree, if you ask me.
My partner and I use open source + custom code only and we're 2 people competing and outrunning companies with 100 employees and more - I'd strongly suggest you go that way too. When you're firm enough get yourself a contractor/partner like me
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
you get to help people, meet people, make a difference and have co-workers who might a) be female b)not generally have serious problems socially
Ok, you may switch to IT, just be carefull while choosing the thing you'll be doing.
For your situation, stay away from software development "as a developer". There are much better roles for you.
I am currently working in a software company, and our expertise is on medical sector. We provide many solutions, and currently i am working in a health provision system as a developer. We have 3 or 4 doctors in our firm. This number changes from time to time, as we hire some doctors as consultants.The doctors are very important for us, since as developers, we can build the system, but we have very little information about the processes and data the system must use. When our software must offer a medicine instead of another, the logic that's used is very, very complex.(international medicine indexes, and many sector spesific info..) And the doctors are the only guys we can consult about these kind of stuff. Try to design a user interface for a doctor, and you'll have a hard time to figure out what should be on the screen for results of say a surgery.
If you are skilled in programming, or want to be so, work on it, that's fine. But instead of trying to be a programmer, try to be the guy who interacts with customers and the technical guys in the company. Believe me, you'll be important for them..
This way, you can use your domain spesific information, and you'll be more secure against the cycles in the industry. It's much harder to find a doctor with IT information, than to find a programmer without sector spesific info.Developers come and go, but you'll have a better chance of staying where you are.
I switched from medicine to computer science in order to scratch a long standing itch, got a CS degree and worked for 10 years in the field. I am now back in medicine earning an intern's salary so I can relearn what I have forgotten.
Yes, a doctor's hours are worse (I have been working up to 120 hours per week) and the responsibility incomparably greater, but at the end of the day, a computer is an innanimate object. Helping people means far more and has far deeper rewards than the (short lived) euphoria of having designed a great program.
If you want to do any kind of computer work, do it in your (very scarce, I know) time as I am doing now.
And yes, as has been mentioned previously, the money and job security are also not to be forgotten.
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
Uh, 50% of people could be below the median starting salary. And the median is unlikely to be the average, unless you have a truly remarkable data set. (And no, you can't arbitrarily drop outliers.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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.
If you are a Physician I am assuming you have a large amount of dough or could have that if you want.
Right now is probably the best time ever to find really good computer engineering, software, hardware talent in the U.S. A lot of really good people are looking for work. So if I were you I would get some basic education on areas you may not know as well. I.e. Data modeling, good basic object oriented classes, some Comp Sci history, database Principles, etc. Then start a company with all the good talent around looking for work doing what you enjoy most.
I could think of many areas in medical technology that if good techies were paired up with an actual physician would have extreme potential and it would be very rewarding work.
On the other hand, I'm in IT consulting, so I might be biased. I also really don't know that industry. Everything in this book may be wrong.
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
..medical software? It's a niche market, and even if you don't code, I'm sure you could bankroll some supercool medical idea. Brainstorm with your doctor buddies, do some market research (or hire some market researchers), and fund the project. Make a piece of software that you would like to use in your own practice, then sell it.
TK
Forget programming, millions of people can do that -- but not many people can mix your two areas of expertise.
Berto
Oddly, we've been looking for people who sit at the crossroads of clinical knowledge and CS/IT for quite a while. Boring details are at www.patientkeeper.com, but the jobs look something like this:
Here's the skinny:
Clincical Product Manager is possibly the hardest, most satisfying, and most visible job at PK. Product management is the ultimate cross-functional leadership role. Through intellectual horsepower, interpersonal skill, domain knowledge, technical depth and attention to detail you'll be the most respected voice in the organization for your product. Sales, marketing, software engineering, QA, customers, and senior management will all want to know what you think. The job: Design and manage an enterprise clinical application, acquire and synthesize wisdom from customers, clinical experts, engineers, and doctors, and formulate a viable plan for success. A successful tour of duty in product management positions you for a leadership role almost anywhere else in the company and is a time-honored path to senior management (viz. Microsoft's Program Manager role). The downside: high visibility, high pressure, responsibility to make a serious difference and enough rope to hang yourself if you screw it up.
The position requires three major skill sets:
Technical aptitude: you don't need to be a software engineer, but you have to be able to take one to lunch. You must understand, extend, and work with the technical issues as they impact your product. You must master all of the customer-facing details of a product so that seemingly minor issues are NOT solved by otherwise clueless software developers. That takes a lot of horsepower.
Clinical aptitude: we're an enterprise (i.e. hospital) clinical applications company. Customers want to feel that you are capable of understanding physician, nurse and administrative workflows and can discuss the product issues with them in their language.
Social aptitude: this role has been identified as having minimal official resources, maximimum responsibilites and the maximum number of interested parties (ie, executives). You'll sink or swim in this role based on how well you can command the respect of the rest of the organization, for that will determine how well you'll be able to rally various constituencies around your plan. It ain't easy, but it is great training for completing these tasks in a larger pond. Intellectual bandwidth required.
Realistically, nobody has all three skillsets out of the gate. You need to have the social aptitude and one of the two others (technical or clinical) "out of the box", and be able to shore up your weaknesses on the third. Clinical depth is particularly prized.
I was in your position 10 years ago, with an active Family Practice and a love of computers. I took advantage of a family move for my wife's career to change mine from medicine. I looked hard at CS, but ultimately decided that I'd be happier _using_ computers to do something, rather than supporting computers for those doing the research. So I ultimately ended up in Biochemisty/Biophysics researching protein crystal structures. It provides plenty of opportunity to work with computers in depth, while I still feel like I'm pushing back the limits of our knowledge. And the medical background has been quite valuable. It has been a fun move for me.
Good luck. Duke out.
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
Nice a fellow Prarie home companion listener! Everyone makes a good point though. The world needs in general to restructure because there are too many tech workers an not enough demand for tech. I have a CS/EE BS degree and I hoped to do Unix Sys Admin or Embeded programming with that. Right now I am considering general electronics repairman because the market is so bleak. For the most obscure job expect a minimum of 100 applicants. My advice to all of you is stay in school or your current field/career. Don't quit your day job. Lastly the Tech fields and especially the computer field requires an encredible ammount of patience. It is extremely stressful in other ways that a physician might feel stress. In computers your patient doesn't always give you the feedback you need to fix them up. Your work is demanding and has health risks(carpel tunnel, back issues from sitting extended periods, ect). A doctor can feel stressed because you have a human life on your hands. A computer technician, programmer, sys admin feels the same stress because you have millions of company dollars on your hand. If you hoped to change careers because you didn't like the stress or hours of being a doctor your in for a rude awakening as a computer professional.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
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!
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 sure there are plenty of companies out there that would love to have a CS person that has a strong background in medicine. You would probably have valuable insight that a normal CS person wouldn't have because of your experiences.
I have a Doctor friend and one thing i've noticed is that they have alot of contacts in the pharmaceutical industry. I would think that some of these companies are developing software for your industry and would be looking for someone with your experience.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
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
1) Ignore those who say there are no jobs in the market. This is simply not true.
2) Provide a unique service/slant towards what you do. The problem with many IT types is they lack of a systematic way of dealing with their network/PC gear. You would be amazed at the folks I have seen who run a few hundred machines literly by the seat of their pants. Nothing is written down, nothing is documented, the guy calls it 'job security' but it results in a real LOSS to his company at the bottom line, measured in downtime for the people who actually do work for the company.
Your age and experience in a 'real' field of profesional service will provide a great basis for a carreer in IT managment/Consulting.
3) Network! You know a lot of doctors. Docs are the BEST customers, because they are professionals. They will respect your ability, pay you, and stand back. You could concievably hit the ground running with your current circle of professional contacts, and never look back.
4) Laugh all the way to the bank and wonder how anyone could outsource a job that requires physical presence...
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.