informatics specialists

Note: this essay was originally posted in Oct. 2008. In view of my mother's injuries and recent death due to interference of EHR's in clinical processes, I think it worthy of reposting.

It has long puzzled me why an experimental technology that costs tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to roll out organizationally and nationally, that individual medical centers are spending upwards of $100 million or more upon, and with a track record as poor as suggested in post such as "An Updated Reading List on Health IT" and "

At an Aug. 2009 post "Why Siemens Healthcare Fails" I described medical informatics talent management issues that were apparent in a job posting at Siemens Medical Solutions, a company that a decade ago seemed to value medical informatics expertise.

(They in fact wanted to hire me then, an offer former employees tell me I was fortunate to have rejected due to a better offer from pharma).

As readers of healthcare blogs know, I have frequently written about the lack of formally-trained Medical Informatics specialists in the pharmaceutical industry.