Publishing in Medical Informatics

1. College of Information Sciences andTechnology Publishing in Medical Informatics Madhu Reddy Ph.D. College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University E-mail: mreddy@ist.psu.edu AIS SIG HEALTH WORKSHOP August 6, 2009

3. Questions • Why should I publish in medical informatics? • What are the challenges to publishing in medical informatics? • What are some useful techniques to help me publish in medical informatics? **Please feel free to stop me and ask questions**

4. Who am I? • Ph.D. - University of California, Irvine (2003) • School of Information and Computer Science • Research Interests • Medical Informatics • Computer-Supported Cooperative Work • Research Approach • Qualitative field studies • Prototyping

5. Background in Medical Informatics • Research focus: Collaboration in information-intensive clinical settings • Ex: Intensive Care Units, Emergency Departments • Publishing in the field since 2000 • Conference and journals • Reviewed for all the major medical informatics journals • Reviewer for NIH and AHRQ SEPs • Chair of AMIA Diane Forsythe Award

6. What is Medical Informatics? • American Medical Informatics Association • 4,000 members in a variety of health related disciplines • The focus is on information technology in clinical/patient care • Clinical systems: electronic medical records, clinical decision support systems • Meeting information needs: Information retrieval systems • Workflow: systems to support clinical protocols

7. Medical Informatics (cont..) • Broad spectrum of researchers and research interests • Sub-areas: Nursing informatics, Consumer informatics, Clinical informatics • What is not covered • Administrative systems (e.g., billing, ADT, etc)

8. Medical Informatics (cont…) • Unlike other research communities, PhDs are in the minority • The concept of “research” is viewed slightly differently • Randomized Control Trial (RCT) as an evaluation technique ** IS and other domains can provide insights for the medical informatics community**

9. Publishing in Medical Informatics • Conferences: • 1 major national conference: Fall Symposium (2 years in Washington, 1 year in other city) • New acceptance format • 1 major international conference: MedInfo (Triannual conference: 2010 in South Africa) • Journals • Shorter papers compared to IS • External/internal issues

10. Most Popular Journals

11. Challenges to Publishing in Medical Informatics • Knowing your audience • Qualitative vs. quantitative • Reviews

12. Challenge 1: know your audience • Broad and diverse • Please keep in mind that most readers are not PhDs • “Practically oriented” – Theory development not of particular interest • Model application is of interest as long as it leads to point 3 below • Take-away lessons important

13. Challenge 2: Qualitative vs. Quantitative • Most medical informatics researchers are quantitatively trained • Getting qualitative papers accepted is a challenge • Need to provide detailed methodology • Presenting some “quantitative” data is helpful

14. Challenge 3: Dealing with Reviews • Review process has improved but is still challenging • “We’ve already done this work.” • Random reviews • “Are we talking about the same paper?” • Quick turn-around times • Medical informatics reviews 4-6 weeks

15. Lessons Learned • Pick the right outlet • Some journals are more friendly to a particular type of work (i.e. IJMI – qualitative research) • Suggest reviewers to the editor • Biggest problem – getting the wrong reviewers for the paper • Dealing with frustration • Good stiff drink helps sometimes!!