Tell us a bit about where you are now?
I’m a GP trainee, also working as a Digital Fellow based in the hospital’s IT department.
Where would you like your career to take you next?
My career has taken an exciting turn in the past few years, as I’ve become more interested in health informatics. From August I’m taking a year out of clinical medicine to work for NHS Digital as part of the FMLM National Medical Director’s Clinical Fellow Scheme.
I’d like to see my career combining working as a GP, as well as a leadership/management role working in health informatics.
What is health informatics? And what sparked your interest in the field?
Health informatics is essentially how we best utilise IT to collect, analyse, synthesise and output data to deliver the safest and most efficient care for our patients. For example, developing a system whereby a patients’ allergy status is recorded accurately in one location, but can be viewed by any healthcare professional needing to see it, hence reducing the risk of someone missing an allergy, or conflicting information about whether or not they have an allergy.
I realised a few years back, even if you’re the ‘best’ doctor, the care you can actually deliver to your patients is significantly constrained by the resources available to you, and increasingly arguably the most prominent resource effecting our daily care is technology. For example, GPs spend the vast majority of their day in front of a computer screen. As clinical staff we understand how technology is used in healthcare, so we’re in the best position to work with IT teams to share this insight into how it can be best implemented to maximise its brilliance!