AMIA 2006
This past week has been hectic and fun. I attended the Annual Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association in Washington, D.C. from Nov 12th - 15th. We arrived Sunday afternoon to a rainy and gloomy Washington, but the Hilton on Connecticut Av was buzzing with people and excitement. The three of us checked into our hotel rooms, registered and attended the opening session. Ted Shortliffe was honored with the the Morris F. Collen award Award for Excellence and a video was shown about his life and contributions to the field.
Next I attended a panel discussion on 'Analysis of healthcare workflows'. This was followed by a workshop chaired by Bonnie Kaplan from the Yale Center for Medical Informatics on failure of IT projects in healthcare. The discussion was interesting but it seemed the issues (eg: importance of change management, inadequate understanding of workflows, imposition of one-size-fits-all IT) brought up were the same as those that the field of IS has been studying for decades with respect to failure of large-scale information systems. I missed the Student Working Group Bussiness Meeting and this is my only regret from the conference. It would have been a good opportunity to network with other PhD students, who were the minority as the conference was mostly composed of faculty members at top US universities, MDs, PhDs, RNs, industry representatives and other professionals.
At night we dined at a Chinese restaurant and retired to our rooms. Connecticut Av offers diverse cuisines with its abundance of affordable restaurants. Eating great food was one of the many pleasures on this trip.
Day II consisted of a panel on 'Integrating technology into workflows' chaired by Vimla Patel of Columbia University (she is also Ted Shortliffe's wife). Three HIT vendors, Pinnacle Health, Zynx Health and Siemens Medical Solutions presented a study on integrating evidence-based medical knowledge into an EMR (electonic medical record) system. In the afternoon I attended a panel related to my current research - 'Information systems in emergency settings' . UCSD presented their WIISARD system which is an emergency response sysem based on electronic triage tags, handheld devices for first responders and a wireless mesh network. My favorite paper in the conference was presented at this session by Nathan Hoot of Vanderbilt's Department of Biomedical Informatics. Nathan is in the MD/PhD program and has developed an 'Early Warning System for Overcrowding in the Emergency Department'. His presentation was good and underlying research is innovative. Day II ended with attending the People and Organizational Issues Working group in which [Adviser] plays a key role. [Co-researcher] and I had a late dinner at an Indian restaurant on Connecticut before collapsing into our beds.
On Day III I started with a panel on 'Emergency Response Information Technology' and WIISARD made another appearance along with Advanced Health and Disaster Aid Network developed at Johns Hopkins Univ. Their design of an emergency systems is similar to UCSD's WIISARD but they use 802.15 instead of 802.11 for the underlying wireless network. This got me thinking that if these are the emergency technologies of the future, differences in wireless standards used could lead to the same problems as those encountered by first responders today due to different radio frequencies used by different counties. We had an authentic Southern Italian lunch at Sette. The evening session I attended was a panel of distinguished people in the field who talked about 'Careers in Medical Informatics'. The importance of having a mentor was highlighted again and again at the session and it made me think that in all my years of education (21 years and counting) I have not found a SINGLE mentor among all the teachers I have encountered. I guess dad has always been my mentor. We ended Day III by walking downtown to Dupont Circle and browsing the shops. Walking around I couldn't help but think how different Washington is from NYC in terms of the crowds, traffic, streets and culture. I have mixed feelings about the traffic circles.
By Day IV we were all exhausted and ready to go home. [Adviser] presented the paper he co-wrote with one of his students at a panel on 'Information Retrieval' in healthcare. The paper came out of a Master's thesis which examined information needs - types and sources - in an ED. While waiting to pack the car and leave, I decided to take the last opportunity to network and ran into Nathan Hoot from Vanderbilt in the registration area. We chatted about his work on the ED overcrowding model and he was gracious enough to discuss the issues he encountered in his research. At noon we loaded up the car and drove back into rainy State College.
Next I attended a panel discussion on 'Analysis of healthcare workflows'. This was followed by a workshop chaired by Bonnie Kaplan from the Yale Center for Medical Informatics on failure of IT projects in healthcare. The discussion was interesting but it seemed the issues (eg: importance of change management, inadequate understanding of workflows, imposition of one-size-fits-all IT) brought up were the same as those that the field of IS has been studying for decades with respect to failure of large-scale information systems. I missed the Student Working Group Bussiness Meeting and this is my only regret from the conference. It would have been a good opportunity to network with other PhD students, who were the minority as the conference was mostly composed of faculty members at top US universities, MDs, PhDs, RNs, industry representatives and other professionals.
At night we dined at a Chinese restaurant and retired to our rooms. Connecticut Av offers diverse cuisines with its abundance of affordable restaurants. Eating great food was one of the many pleasures on this trip.
Day II consisted of a panel on 'Integrating technology into workflows' chaired by Vimla Patel of Columbia University (she is also Ted Shortliffe's wife). Three HIT vendors, Pinnacle Health, Zynx Health and Siemens Medical Solutions presented a study on integrating evidence-based medical knowledge into an EMR (electonic medical record) system. In the afternoon I attended a panel related to my current research - 'Information systems in emergency settings' . UCSD presented their WIISARD system which is an emergency response sysem based on electronic triage tags, handheld devices for first responders and a wireless mesh network. My favorite paper in the conference was presented at this session by Nathan Hoot of Vanderbilt's Department of Biomedical Informatics. Nathan is in the MD/PhD program and has developed an 'Early Warning System for Overcrowding in the Emergency Department'. His presentation was good and underlying research is innovative. Day II ended with attending the People and Organizational Issues Working group in which [Adviser] plays a key role. [Co-researcher] and I had a late dinner at an Indian restaurant on Connecticut before collapsing into our beds.
On Day III I started with a panel on 'Emergency Response Information Technology' and WIISARD made another appearance along with Advanced Health and Disaster Aid Network developed at Johns Hopkins Univ. Their design of an emergency systems is similar to UCSD's WIISARD but they use 802.15 instead of 802.11 for the underlying wireless network. This got me thinking that if these are the emergency technologies of the future, differences in wireless standards used could lead to the same problems as those encountered by first responders today due to different radio frequencies used by different counties. We had an authentic Southern Italian lunch at Sette. The evening session I attended was a panel of distinguished people in the field who talked about 'Careers in Medical Informatics'. The importance of having a mentor was highlighted again and again at the session and it made me think that in all my years of education (21 years and counting) I have not found a SINGLE mentor among all the teachers I have encountered. I guess dad has always been my mentor. We ended Day III by walking downtown to Dupont Circle and browsing the shops. Walking around I couldn't help but think how different Washington is from NYC in terms of the crowds, traffic, streets and culture. I have mixed feelings about the traffic circles.
By Day IV we were all exhausted and ready to go home. [Adviser] presented the paper he co-wrote with one of his students at a panel on 'Information Retrieval' in healthcare. The paper came out of a Master's thesis which examined information needs - types and sources - in an ED. While waiting to pack the car and leave, I decided to take the last opportunity to network and ran into Nathan Hoot from Vanderbilt in the registration area. We chatted about his work on the ED overcrowding model and he was gracious enough to discuss the issues he encountered in his research. At noon we loaded up the car and drove back into rainy State College.
The conference was exciting and I feel rejuvinated. It was the much-needed dose of motivation to work on my research problem. Being around the doctors, nurses and researchers that make this diverse field so exciting was a heady experience. I have a feeling I will blog more about the various questions that the issues discussed at the conference left me with. I also look forward to AMIA 2007 in Chicago and hopefully I will have a paper next time.
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