By William Hersh MD – I am increasingly asked to describe the difference between data science and biomedical informatics. Distinguishing these disciplines takes on added importance with the recent publication of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, National Library of Medicine (NLM) Working Group, report on the future of the NLM, which calls for NLM to become a leader in data science at NIH.
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By William Hersh – The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality is an unheralded government agency that performs a great deal of healthcare-related research out of proportion to its small size. Just browsing through the AHRQ web site makes it clear that agency does a great breadth of work for its annual $400 million budget.
By William Hersh – NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins accepted a report from his Advisory Committee that set forth a strategic vision that affirmed the NLM as a strategic leader in data science, biomedical informatics, and as a library resource.
By William Hersh – Many of us in the informatics field, myself included, sometimes believe that the value proposition of informatics is so intuitively obvious that we do not need to explain it to the rest of the world. API-based interoperability? Secondary use of clinical data? Standardized terminology? Their value is so certain that we need not explain it. Not!
By William Hersh MD – One of the aspects of medicine that struck me as a medical student was its imprecision. I was surprised, sometimes shocked, at decisions that were made based on vague symptoms reported by patients, ambiguous findings detected on physical examination, and even variation in “hard” measurements such as laboratory results.
By William Hersh MD – Being concerned with representation of information and knowledge, researchers in informatics sometimes express concern with the concept of “semantic drift,” where the meaning of words and concepts changes over time.
By William Hersh MD – It is hard to believe that the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed into law five years ago, in 2009, and at the end of the year, the massive legislation was shaped into a program that has profoundly altered the informatics world, not to mention all of healthcare.
By William Hersh, MD – Lately I have received requests for advice from physicians in training asking what they can do to make themselves more competitive for clinical informatics fellowship positions. In some sense these are similar to the emails I receive from established physicians asking about eligibility for the clinical informatics subspecialty here and now.
By William Hersh, MD – Like many in academic informatics, my career has benefitted greatly from the support of National Library of Medicine (NLM), the institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that has been devoted to, among other things, support for research and training in biomedical and health informatics.