Healthcare IT

Hello all,

Starting next week, I will be an IT Specialist at a small hospital (joining the one other guy there, getting in before major changes, should be a great time). The pc / server work should be fine, but I'm sure there's a lot of industry-specific things I will be learning.

Right now I work in pc repair for a local ISP/Telco, and I like getting emails from Connected Planet everyday - it used to be Telephony. Some of them have decent info, others are crap, but it covers a lot of current events in that industry.
Can any of you think of something similar for healthcare? Some type of newsletter or online magazine that I can check out?
Thanks.

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Comments

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on job!!

Bokeh

Health IT Exchange [SearchHealthIT@lists.techtarget.com] - Try that. I get their emails quite often, and good info.

whotime

congrats, i currently work for an IT department at a major hospital in memphis and it is hard work but you learn a lot.

cyberguypr

Healthcare Informatics

Free magazine. Although oriented at CIOs there's always a thing or two that are helpful at all levels.

eansdad

Congrats on the job....When I worked for (A certain University in Pennsylvania Hospital) doing desktop support it was a nightmare. No standards, some PCs with out AV, seemed like no firewall and everyone had local admin rights. 90% of my time was removing virus/spyware and the other 10 was re-imagine PCs. All I can say is that doctors are freaks....

Good luck on your new job...

alan2308

humdingy02 wrote: »

Hello all,

Starting next week, I will be an IT Specialist at a small hospital (joining the one other guy there, getting in before major changes, should be a great time). The pc / server work should be fine, but I'm sure there's a lot of industry-specific things I will be learning.

Right now I work in pc repair for a local ISP/Telco, and I like getting emails from Connected Planet everyday - it used to be Telephony. Some of them have decent info, others are crap, but it covers a lot of current events in that industry.
Can any of you think of something similar for healthcare? Some type of newsletter or online magazine that I can check out?
Thanks.

It's not what you're asking about, but Cisco has a new course specifically for IT in health care that right now is just for Michigan. I'm planning to take it this summer.

erpadmin

I'm curious and maybe this isn't the thread to ask it in, but it kinda may help the OP out. Congratulations, btw!!

What is so different about "Healthcare IT" than IT in another sector/vertical? I mean, I know it has it's own specialized software/applications and I'd imagine hardware. However so does the every other industry.

I guess what I'm asking is, what makes "Healthcare IT" so special? I guess I should add this is not a sarcastic question; I legitimately am curious. Is it because of the patient records being electronically stored that's making this the "in" thing for the moment?

eMeS

erpadmin wrote: »

I guess what I'm asking is, what makes "Healthcare IT" so special? I guess I should add this is not a sarcastic question; I legitimately am curious. Is it because of the patient records being electronically stored that's making this the "in" thing for the moment?

It depends on the type of healthcare organization it is. A teaching hospital will have different technology requirements than a research hospital or a regular general practice hospital. A hospital that primarily treats cancer will have different technology requirements than other types of hospitals. Pharmacies have special systems that allow them to track and manage all of the controlled substances they deal with...kind of like configuration management on steroids (yes, pun intended). All healthcare organizations generate and store tons of information. Then there are some specific technical applications that are a big deal in hospitals, like paging services, and Vocera badging and communicators. Research hospitals will often have huge supercomputing departments, and will regularly move huge datasets and have extreme networking and storage requirements. This is really all just skimming the surface....

The one thing that all healthcare organizations have in common is that the number one priority is patient care. Anything that impacts patient care is bad, and all technology has to be considered from this standpoint....how does it contribute to, and how can it impact patient care.

MS

humdingy02

Lots of congrats, lots of good info - thanks everyone.
I'll be sure to check out those sources. That Cisco course could be interesting, I'll have to check that out too.