Publishing%20in%20Medical%20Informatics

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Publishing in Medical Informatics

• Madhu Reddy Ph.D.
• College of Information Sciences and Technology
• The Pennsylvania State University
• E-mail mreddy_at_ist.psu.edu
• AIS SIG HEALTH WORKSHOP
• August 6, 2009

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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Most Popular Journals
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Challenges to Publishing in Medical Informatics

• Knowing your audience
• Qualitative vs. quantitative
• Reviews

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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

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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

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Challenge 3 Dealing with Reviews

• Review process has improved but is still
  challenging
• Weve already done this work.
• Random reviews
• Are we talking about the same paper?
• Quick turn-around times
• Medical informatics reviews 4-6 weeks

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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!!