1.5 years of OpenClinTech
As 2024 comes to a close, I'm reflecting on the progress I've made in launching OpenClinTech back in July 2023. It was my personal initiative to create educational content at the intersection of healthcare and technology that was easily accessible (e.g. free) in hopes that we'll find more innovative solutions to our healthcare problems today. It was also a continuation of my 2022 goal during the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program to create the content that I wish I had when I was a student. To be honest, the momentum has been slower than I'd like as I've only barely scratched the surface of what I had hoped to achieve in my 2023 planning. Nonetheless, I'm still proud of my deliverables thus far and excited for the opportunity to continue learning, building, and connecting with my community.
In this blog, I'd like to share some of the things that are top of mind for me as I contemplate future content for OpenClinTech. If you haven't already, be sure to check out OpenClinTech (https://www.openclintech.com/learn) and my YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@briankfung) for educational content about FHIR, artificial intelligence, informatics, and coding. It's all free :)
Using FHIR to Optimize Clinical Artificial Intelligence
I have to admit, I have a lot of #FOMO with the ubiquitous hype of artificial intelligence (AI). Especially its use in healthcare. It's exciting to see the variety of applications explored, notably those from large language model (LLM)-based, foundation models, like ambient scribes and semantic search, but I'm most intrigued with clinical reasoning. I'm also extremely skeptical of deploying them into production use cases in our healthcare systems from a safety and efficacy perspective.
Because of this, I've actually embarked on a bit of a side quest in 2024 to focus my efforts in diving deeper into Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) because I think that it allows us to aggregate higher quality data from disparate systems that can be used to create benchmark datasets for improving these foundation models.
In this article, I want to explore a few thoughts I have about training, evaluating, and deploying clinical AI, with a focus on clinical reasoning, into production systems. For the purposes of this article, I use LLMs, foundation models, and clinical AI interchangeably with clinical AI focusing on the reasoning application.
My Experience Cracking the HL7 FHIR Certifications (R4 & Foundation)
Gaining proficiency in Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (#FHIR) has been high on my list of professional goals ever since I joined Verily in April 2022. Though, aside from just learning it, I wanted a way to measure whether I actually understood the material. After a bit of browsing for FHIR resources (pun intended), I came across Health Level Seven International's certifications and saw that one existed for HL7 FHIR R4 Proficiency and knew that I'd sit for the exam at some point in the future. Further, HL7 introduced a new set of FHIR certifications in 2024, including a new 'Foundation' certification that replaces HL7 FHIR R4 Proficiency which will retire in December 2024. Of course, I also added that to my list of professional goals.
As of last month, I sat for and passed both exams and received the certifications. In this article, I want to describe my experience preparing for and taking the two exams.
Building Healthcare Software as a Pharmacist
I watched a TED Conferences in 2013 when I was a PGY-1 Pharmacy Resident at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System about how innovation typically happens at the intersection of very different things. Some may refer to this idea as "hashtag#orthogonal thinking". Nevertheless, it's always been on the back of my mind over the years as I've continually found benefit in learning about things outside of my general sphere of hashtag#pharmacy.
Given that I've been diving deeper into the hashtag#technical weeds of hashtag#software development, I wanted to share a bit of my experience thus far on how it has been going. In case you didn't want to read the article, the tl;dr is simply: I absolutely love applying my domain expertise in building hashtag#healthcare software.
#healthcareonlinkedin #clinicianengineer
Path of The Clinician Engineer
I've spent the vast majority of my career training to become a pharmacist, and subsequently, an informaticist. However, in the last 6 years - especially the last 2 - my curiosities have led me down very different, technical paths that bridge the healthcare and technology industries. During this time, I've also struggled to put into words what exactly I was training to become, but also, what I wish I would have done differently knowing what I know now.
In this article, I'd like to very briefly explore my current, and very rudimentary, ideation of what I'd like OpenClinTech to become: the central hub for training clinicians that want to be at the forefront of developing technology solutions that solve complex healthcare problems. The Clinician Engineer.
To Philosophize is to Learn to Die
In the last 1.5 months, I've found myself reflecting a lot more than I usually do. I suspect it was a series of events that included deaths in my social circles, aging family members that are constantly hospitalized (including those of my close friends), and my usual ponderings about purpose and whether the path I'm taking is the right one. In fact, I think this may have been the first time in my life where I've felt I've had to choose between family and work.
Given how closely tied my career is to my identity, the title of this article draws from a passage I heard from my 3rd time listening (and 3 more times within the last 1.5 months) to When Breath Becomes Air, a memoir by Paul Kalanithi, a Stanford University neurosurgeon that was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer shortly after completing his training. Given how many of us, especially in America, live to work vs. work to live, this seemed like a fitting article for LinkedIn.
Health Tech: The Grass Isn't Always Greener on the Other Side
Ever since I made the transition myself from the healthcare industry into tech (healthcare focused), 1.5 years ago, I've been fairly positive about my experiences and very supportive of others, primarily healthcare professionals, that were interested in making the pivot themselves. However, I think it may be unfair of me to only share the positives and not the negatives - or rather - reasons why you may want to reconsider pivoting to tech. In this article, I want to briefly expand on those thoughts.
Drinking Port in Portugal - Solo Trip to Lisbon
My reasons for visiting Lisbon are embarrassingly superficial, but I’m so glad I went through with it: to drink Port in Portugal, travel to a city I’ve never visited, and check out the city I saw some FIRE (aka financially independent, retire early) people gravitate towards. A quick shout out to my friend Elizabeth who first told me about “drinking Port in Portugal”. Whether or not she was serious, I checked it off during my solo travel to Lisbon just a week ago.
Empowering Clinicians with Technology to Solve Healthcare Problems
Less than 2 weeks ago, on June 14, 2023, I graduated from the Stanford University School of Medicine's Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program on and also dropped CS103: Mathematical Foundations of Computing. The latter, as I had mentioned in my last article, would have been my first formal entry into the computer science (#CS) track and the first year of four (2023 - 2027) if I continued with my MS in CS plan I had previously shared in this Google spreadsheet.
Well, I guess that's life.
I imagine quite a few may have already predicted this as I've been quite burnt out trying to juggle everything. Nonetheless, I'm much more excited about what I'm hoping to share in this article which will, hopefully, be a long-term, if not lifelong, commitment towards my future goals: building OpenClinTech.
#healthtech #openclintech #clinicians #healthcare
6 Weeks Until I Graduate Stanford's Biomedical Informatics Graduate Certificate
It feels like forever since I started my first class, BIOMEDIN260 - Data Science for Medicine, less than a year ago in September 2022. They say time flies when you're having fun, but that's also true when you're extremely busy. As I near the completion of Stanford University School of Medicine's Biomedical Informatics (#BMI) Graduate Certificate in 6 weeks and begin my journey through Stanford University School of Engineering's Computer Science (#CS) courses, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experience thus far.
#healthcareonlinkedin #biomedicalinformatics #computerscience #healthcare #datascience
Why All Clinicians Should Learn to Code
I’m an informatics pharmacist that graduated in 2013 but did my PGY-1 in Pharmacy Practice in 2013 and PGY-2 in Pharmacy Informatics in 2014. Thus, I officially started my full-time career as an informatics pharmacist in 2015. I wanted to write about my thoughts on coding and likely share some of my insights along the way as I develop my coding skills because one of the most common questions I get from students interested in informatics is: “Do I need to learn to code to be an informatics pharmacist?”
I'm Letting Go of My BCPS (aka Pharmacy Board Certification)
I'm letting go of my BCPS recertification this year and I have so many mixed emotions about this despite having it on the back of my mind for the last few years.
I just received the recertification email from BPS - Board of Pharmacy Specialties 10 days ago and had this article on my list of tasks since it's something that I wanted to write about as I part ways with one of the biggest goals that I defined for myself ever since I started pharmacy school at the University of Florida.
I'm not sure how this article will pan out as I am planning on just writing what comes top of mind as I sort through my own thoughts.
DIGITAL DISRUPTION IN HEALTHCARE: INSIGHTS FROM A CLINICIAN IN A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
An insightful article in NEJM Catalyst was published on March 1, 2023, by Karen DeSalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google, and Michael Howell, Chief Clinical Officer at Google. Having spent the last 10+ years as an pharmacist and clinician at multiple health systems (e.g. Mayo Clinic, University of Utah Health, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System), the article made me spend some time today to reflect on my own foray into a technology company just 10 months ago. In short, I am grateful for the path that Karen and Michael undoubtedly paved for other clinicians to venture into this industry.
In this article, I'd like to share my own experience as a health data architect/clinician at Verily, an Alphabet Inc. company and how it relates to the 6 lessons laid out by Karen and Michael. You can read the full #NEJM article here.
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.
Data Science: to Pursue or not Pursue | My Experience taking Stanford's Data for Medicine Class
Every now and then, something happens in life that dramatically alters your trajectory on where you want to go. My experience taking Stanford University School of Medicine's Data Science for Medicine course with professor Nigam Shah is one of them.
No Silver Bullet in Healthcare
On November 17, 2022, Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr., a pioneer in the computer science world and 1999 recipient of the A.M. Turing Award, passed away. I accidentally stumbled upon Fred in an internal Google Health chat where a colleague gave a nod to his contributions over the years and referenced one of his most influential ones, "No Silver Bullet". A contribution that impacted not only him but very likely most, if not all, of the software development industry.
I spent the first hour of my day today reading through some of the highlights of No Silver Bullet (I'll read it in its entirety at some point), published in 1986, along with some reflections on it 20 years later in the 2008 Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) panelist discussion. My rudimentary summaries of both in this article.
Academic Success breeds Mediocrity
As I was reading “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel this morning, I was abruptly and uncomfortably caught by one particular sentence:
“All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past”
No matter how many times I attempted to continue reading past that line, I was stopped in my tracks and re-read it again and again.
