By William Hersh MD – As is the tradition with this blog, I end each year with a reflective look at the year past and what the future may hold. The year 2021 is not ending quite like I anticipated. At the beginning of the year, there were stirrings of optimism.
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By William Hersh MD – The rationale and implementation for reading data from the electronic health record and other clinical sources is relatively simple and straightforward. Especially now enshrined into law in the US by the 21st Century Cures Rule, and standardized by the FHIR application programming interface, accessing data for reading by clinicians, patients, and others is here to stay.
By William Hersh MD – When I teach about the features of search engines like PubMed, I often quip that if you use the limit function to narrow your search to randomized controlled trials, which are the best evidence for medical and health interventions, and you still have many retrievals.
By William Hersh MD – I often muse that there are few computer applications that truly save me time. For all the fun and productive things that computers enable me to do, they are just as often a time sink rather than a time saver, especially when hardware or software go wrong.
The thought leaders in our community are good about sharing their thoughts on the issues of today. Here are the top read and shared guest posts of October that we think deserve sharing again.
By William Hersh MD – After several years of planning, professional certification is coming to the rest of the informatics field, i.e., moving beyond just board certification for eligible physicians. The AMIA has now rolled out the AMIA Health Informatics Certification (AHIC, formerly Advanced Health Informatics Certification).
By William Hersh MD – While I agree with those who argue that scientific rankings, especially based on bibliographic citation indicators, are limited in their measurement of a scientist’s impact, I must admit a certain fascination with them. Perhaps that stems from my interest in dissemination and retrieval of scientific information generally.
By William Hersh MD – The potential for AI to transform biomedicine and health is immense, yet at this time that potential remains largely unfulfilled. There have been many impressive achievements in applying AI to biomedical and health data using clean and well-curated data sets.
By William Hersh MD – In addition to its public health problems, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed other fault lines in society, not the least of which is systematic racism that still pervades American society. A more equitable society would ensure diversity and inclusion in all aspects of life, including in healthcare and in biomedical research.