Informatics Nerd

Recently I was working with some colleagues to try to understand why their QRDA Cat 1 XML files were being imported into popHealth with no errors (that's a good thing), but only including one encounter out of several encounters listed in the file (that's a bad thing).  This was in popHealth v5.0.  Some changes have been made in popHealth v5.1 to use the go-cda-tools library, and I'm not sure if these findings still hold true for that version. The logic for importing files of any type in popHealth is really done by the health-data-standards (or HDS for short) library.  It's worth noting that popHealth has its own fork of HDS that it maintains.  Specifically, v5.0 uses the mongoid5R2 branch for production use (you can see this within popHealth's Gemfile ). So what was going on?  After doing some tracing, we can see that during the loading process, a call is made here to deduplicate records:    https://github.com/OSEHRA/health-data-standards/blob/master/lib/heal

I had a realization recently, in my software developer role – I’ve become a much better C# programmer because I’ve been programming in Ruby.  A lot of this is due to the Ruby developers I’ve worked with, who have taught me how to do things the “Ruby Way” and the “Rails Way”, or in some cases just the “Right Way”.  Good programmers know that they can never stop learning, and this highlighted the importance of not only learning new frameworks and libraries, but also new languages (and language cultures). I realized the same thing applies to informatics.  I like to think that I’m a better informatician because I’ve been able to learn different informatics “cultures”.  I started my career developing EHR software, and was focused a lot on how to most efficiently collect that information to support clinical workflows.  This, of course, required me (a novice to the field of healthcare at the time) to learn about clinical workflows!  But I was able to adapt to that mindset. When I mad

Happy Informatics Week , Chicago! I must say I'm particularly pleased that today through November 7th we will have the unique opportunity to have the field of informatics not only "officially" recognized by our mayor, but to have it done so in a way that will provide more exposure to what informatics is and what impact it has made in healthcare. For those of you in the Chicago area who may not be aware of the events, you can find a list at: http://chicagoinformaticsweek.org/events.html This, of course, is right around the time of the AMIA Annual Symposium, and following will be the CTSA Informatics meeting.  I'm excited to be heading an AMIA panel on the changing face of security and privacy with respect to the role that "honest brokers" play (session S69, Tuesday from 3:30-5:00), and a poster describing recent work to integrate a research registry recruitment system into a commercial EHR vendor's patient portal. I'm looking forward to catch

As I'm getting ready for a yearly performance review, I started thinking about when I applied for this and previous jobs and all of the effort I put into building the "perfect" resume. Tweaking it to have the right keywords for the job description, making sure I didn't overstate or understate my effort, but making sure whoever read this knew I was the best candidate. I started thinking about what that really translates to at my job, and what skills are practical and important each day. I came up with this as my new resume (no, not sending it out, very happy at my current job but thanks). Of course I realize sometimes you have to "play the game", but tell me this isn't what you're really looking for in an employee: I know I need to keep learning, and so I do.  I can (and do) listen better than I can speak.  I won't be a jerk to anyone in the organization, no matter their role.  I will come in to work and genuinely want to be there. I&#

While poor time planning may be mostly to blame, I have also been quite busy the past few months with the new addition of a baby boy (our first child) to our household. Walking through the medical system in the context of delivery, follow-up and now pediatric care has given me some insight into those parts of healthcare. Previously my only personal interactions were the occasional office visit for check-ups. With no real complaints, I was more amazed at the amount of data being collected in the time prior to delivery, and the realization that my son has his own medical record number! At home, my wife brought to light a potential area for growth in newborn care - driven more out of need than any formal proposal. Tracking feedings and diaper changes was something done at the hospital, and once we were home the feeding chart became a very valuable flowsheet of information. Currently it's been done on paper (don't worry, I have plans to develop an app!), but has given our sl

The field of health and biomedical informatics is ever changing, not only just in name (noticing perhaps the recent pre-pending of “health and”), but also by the individuals who are practitioners.  Review of early works in the field show many of the seminal pieces originated from doctors who understood the impact that technology could play in healthcare [1, 2].  As the field expanded and grew, it was perhaps natural that other healthcare providers (i.e. nurses and public health practitioners) realized the special needs that pertained to their unique practice and workflow.  With this realization blossomed a growth of sub-disciplines within HBI, to the point that nursing informatics and public health informatics are vibrant components of the broader HBI community, and large enough to warrant annual meetings. The growth, of course, is not limited to just a few disciplines within the spectrum of providing healthcare, but also to the side of those who are focused on health information tech