What I want to be when I grow up..still
I spent the last 2 months engaged in conversation with an assortment of individuals about what I want to be when I grow up. Yes, I’m still trying to figure that out. In fact, I don’t think I ever really settled into a career as of yet that made me go, “Wow, I want to do this for the rest of my life”.
The thing that fascinates me the most though is that I’m not alone. There are so many individuals out there wondering the same thing. Aside from exploring my own interests, I spent a great deal of time conversing with others, often strangers, on what paths they should take as well. It seemed as though the article I wrote about Data Science resonated with many of you who are in careers at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
In this month’s article, I wanted to reflect on some of the conversations I’ve had over the last 2 months, but also share with you some of my next steps.
Abundance of options
A common theme in all of these conversations were the abundance of options in the various paths one could take in this realm. Here’s a list of a few that continuously came up:
- Data scientist
- Data engineer
- Data architect
- Research scientist
- Research engineer
- Product manager
- Software engineer
- Consultant
- Biomedical informatician
- Clinical informaticist
Personally, there are aspects of each that I really enjoy, but there’s always something about each that makes it difficult to fully invest in.
For example, a PhD appears to be mandatory for a research scientist, but not a research engineer. I’m more interested in a mix of implementation and research, so research engineer may be more fitting.
I really like building things and software engineering appears to be a good choice to explore. It’d be amazing to build something end-to-end one day, but I’m not sure if I’d want to invest all my time into learning all the skills required to do so as I have other interests I’d like to explore. Besides, it seems as though the path towards software engineering may involve detours outside of healthcare. Perhaps not necessarily a bad thing, but I like to make decisions based on my lifelong goals which involve the quadruple aim. More on this in the last section.
Product management comes up often and there are many who suggest this as an option to explore further given my domain expertise. This is something I recommend to others that come from clinical backgrounds as well since I think it leverages a lot of our background to influence the development of products that our users would truly appreciate. Thing is, many pharmacy informatics roles (or clinical informatics) already provide a bit of this experience and I’m looking to dive deeper into the technical weeds of a product and also think that I’d be a better product manager in doing so. Something I may explore down the road, but it doesn’t resonate well with me currently.
The path I’m still most interested in exploring is data scientist for many of the reasons I outlined in my prior article. It’s not a definite yes as of yet as I worry it’d be too far removed from direct patient care and I’d lose sight of what’s important. Granted, that can be said of many of the roles listed, so the point is moot.
As you can see, I’m still in a state of flux as I figure out what role(s) interest me the most. Which, brings me to the next topic at hand: fundamentals.
Thinking differently
At Mayo Clinic, I discovered the value of working on different teams. For example, I was part of the clinical decision support team, but also on the pharmacy informatics, antimicrobial stewardship, and infection control teams. Some of the most innovative solutions we used to build the hospital rules-based system (HRBS) into Epic for our antimicrobial stewardship team involved the learnings from our work on clinical decision support and pharmacy informatics. Similarly, the benefits applied the other way as well as lessons from antimicrobial stewardship shaped the direction of how we handled configuring medications for the entire enterprise. In fact, we piloted many of the ideas that became the norm for other specialties.
As expected, a typical long-winded example to illustrate a point:
A mixture of different experiences can create new solutions that are innovative and unique.
This is one of the key reasons why I switched my trajectory from biomedical informatics to computer science. I think the knowledge gap I have in the fundamentals of computer science is a lot larger than the other areas I’ve explored like pharmacy, informatics, and public policy. Objectively speaking, I think the value, as measured by the amount of benefit given the cost of resources, is highest with computer science. Examples here include having a better understanding of concepts like Big O notation or simply being able to communicate more effectively with my engineering counterparts. Thus, the next step in my journey is the pursuit of a MS in Computer Science at Stanford University School of Engineering.
Solving a problem the world needs
I truly feel as though I’m at my best when my time is spent on something that is impactful. It’s probably the millennial in me thinking I can take on the world, but it’s also what keeps me motivated. This easily manifests into something that become more and more certain as the years go on: starting my own business. It also underpins why I’m more keen to pursue more training (and networking) from Stanford University. Many of the students there are working on their own startups part-time or drop out to work on something full time. I’m keenly interested in exploring more of my ideas with other entrepreneurs looking to solve a problem that the world needs.
I was recently working with Jay Jordan Uy on logo designs and went through the exercise of defining what my business would be about. I’ve done it many times in the past, especially when I started ImproRx or Pharmacy Informatics Academy, but it becomes a bit more clear each time I do it. Here’s a short snippet of what’s in my mind currently:
My vision is to connect the world’s healthcare data. My mission is to train the next generation of biomedical informaticians in pursuit of the quadruple aim of healthcare.
My values are:
- Bias for action. I value action over ideas. The former leads to results, while the latter is a dime a dozen. Partially influenced by Amazon’s leadership principles.
- Extreme ownership. Influenced heavily by Jocko Willink’s book: Extreme Ownership, I think we should take accountability and ownership over every decision. Leadership and management isn’t just a top-down approach, but bottom-up as well.
- Think big. “…crazy people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do” — Steve Jobs. I think I may be too idealistic at times, but I’ve come to embrace it. Besides, if we were being too realistic, we may never have had airplanes.
- Universally accessible. As stated in the Constitution of the World Health Organization, “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition”. Especially when it comes to finances, everyone should be able to learn anything and everything regardless of how affluent they may be. My experience at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s MPH program has deeply cemented this into my values and it will stick with me forever.
- Lifelong learning. If being a student was a career, it’d be the easiest decision for me to make. I strongly value the pursuit of continuous learning and being open-minded to new ideas. Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. We probably need new solutions to tackle the issues that we have today and you can’t do that by remaining status quo.
- Give more, take less. As healthcare professionals, we aim to serve the public. I believe that we should prioritize decisions that add value to the lives of others. Can’t go wrong with creating more of this in the world.
- Empathize cross-functionally. From the perspective of a healthcare professional, I understood this all throughout pharmacy school at the University of Florida because of this amazing video from Cleveland Clinic. However, it probably wasn’t until I interned at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) / Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and started working at Verily that I began to truly empathize with the difficulties of healthcare policy and technical challenges faced by our politicians and software engineers. I think empathy is what allows us to work cross-functionally the best.
Conclusion
As with all my articles, the conclusion is never a fully formed idea, but rather a documentation of my journey. Shout out to everyone that has taken the time out of their day to share a bit of their wisdom with me in the last few months. You have my gratitude.
