#HIMSS14: #HITsm-ers Share Their Health IT Journeys
On The Marc Media was fortunate enough to grab a few minutes with some of HealthIT’s savviest social media influencers at #HIMSS14 last month in Orlando to ask them a couple of questions we’re all dying to know. You may know @HealthyThinker, @WareFLO, @MandiBPro, @OchoTex and @DocWeighsIn from their Twitter bios, but now you can put a face with the handle.
Q: How did you get into the Health IT industry?
)
@OchoTex: I’ve been in healthcare since 2000. Health IT has the most innovation happening and it’s fun to find out how health care can be improved or made easier and how things can be enhanced with technology. Technology was something I always grew up with—my dad always had the newest computer or the newest hand held games so I’ve always been into technology. It seemed a natural fit for me.
@MandiBPro: I was actually an English major—I have a masters in rhetoric and composition, and I taught my first graduate English class in 1997. Half way through that semester I decided I couldn’t read another sentence that those students had written. Teaching was not for me; it wasn’t my calling. I took my first web development course the next semester and my professor in that course happened to have a side consulting business and he hired me half way through. So that’s how I fell into IT and maybe 5 years later I got an opportunity to manage consulting projects for Blue Cross of Florida in their data warehousing department. That launched my fascination with Health IT. I think the growth opportunity in this industry is tremendous and it’s very fulfilling because I can see the results of my work every day in my life and the lives of those I love.
@HealthyThinker: I studied Health Economics in college. My graduate degree is in health economics and I became a healthcare consultant in the late 80s. I worked in the US and then moved to London with my husband and then came home. It was actually in the UK where I first worked with healthcare computing, not in the US. We were not caring about computers then. But in the UK since it’s a single payer system they had to manage in a budget so they had to start counting money and looking at clinical outcomes—they’ve been doing that for over 20 years now. So when I came home I took on projects that really focused on the intersection of people and technology and health IT. Now I work with the whole ecosystem—I do a lot of work with pharmacy and biotech, with non-profits and foundations, and with providers and payers and even food companies.
Stay tuned for more footage of #HIMSS14′s social media influencers!
