TH‐A‐ValA‐01: The Value Proposition of the Physicist in Informatics

• Published in: Medical Physics
• Main Author: Nagy, P
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2006
• Subjects: General Medicine; SCAR
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.2241823; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1118%2F1.2241823; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1118/1.2241823

There exists today a vacuum in the knowledge to transform medicine with information technology (informatics). Many diagnostic physicists today get pulled into their institution's PACS implementation willingly or not and find themselves trying to provide informatics leadership. For those physicists who are interested, aiding a facility with informatics can be very rewarding. There is a strong affinity between the informatics skill set and the role of diagnostic physics in the way we bridge the worlds of science and technology with medicine. Many of the leaders of the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM, formerly SCAR), are diagnostic physicists. There is an opportunity of growth for the profession to provide leadership in the changing face of medicine. A subcommittee on Imaging Informatics has been established by the AAPM to understand this opportunity. The views expressed in this talk are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the committee. We will try and present a roadmap for those physicists who are being called in to fill the informatics roles of their department or are interested in expanding their clinical tool set to include informatics. Most physicists trained today have a solid grounding in computer science. In addition to a good comprehension in computer science, an informaticist needs to know about systems management, systems integration, and project management. Systems management includes the information technology principles needed to ensure smooth operations of a large IT service such as PACS. This includes availability monitoring, change management, failure mode effects analysis, problem management, performance monitoring, disaster recovery, and continuity management to name a few. A physicist should not be a PACS administrator, but instead be the person to train the PACS administrators and provide the oversight and strategy to allow the facility take advantage of information technology. This is identical to our role in working closely and training technologists in ...