The Introduction Entry

My name is Sally, and I am a graduating senior at USC's Marshall School of Business. In May I will receive my Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems. My interests will let you know that I am a true geek at heart. Though I am not exceptionally good at anything, I like to take a stab at everything.

My current hobbies include flag football, golf, reading celebrity gossip, trying new recipes, going to musicals, playing Rock Band and Madden '08. Now, I know this is quite embarrassing, but my database management class is taking over my life. Last week, I was scrolling through my iPod and I started thinking about the conceptual diagram of the database I could create. I became giddy as I was thinking about the cardinalities, entities and attributes.

My true passion lies in hospitals. Don't worry; it's not a morbid obsession. I just find it fascinating how hospitals keep it together through the day's chaotic operations (forgive the pun). What is more amazing is how behind the times they are. Utilizing the technology that is available today would allow hospital to operate more efficiently and effortlessly. The future of healthcare administration lies in technology.

Yesterday, I began my internship at a hospital. I consider myself fortunate because I am working directly with the CIO, who was a guest speaker in my Information Systems Design and Analysis class last semester. Opportunities at hospitals are hard to come by, mainly because hospitals do not participate in on-campus recruitment. The lack of effort on their part makes eager students, like myself, believe that they don't need us. Surprisingly enough, hospitals are in dire need of geeks, not just doctor geeks, but IT nerds too. If you are interested in healthcare IT, you should take the initiative and reach out to hospital administrators and offer yourself to them. Hospital staffs don't have the time to reach out to you. They are busy keeping the hospital in operation.

Just think about the difference you could make in a healthcare environment! As the use of technology increases, bedside care should be less stressful to the nurses who handle a handful of patients suffering from a variety of ailments. This would in turn decrease the number of human errors that occur due to high case loads and stress. Also, as hospitals are attempting to make the transition into becoming paperless organizations, the need for IT professionals is extremely high.

In this blog I will talk about my experiences at my internship, current trends in healthcare IT and anything else I find interesting about the future of hospitals and healthcare IT.