After close to two years of effort (see here) the Healthcare IT Stack Exchange Site is closing for good. HealthCare IT is closing:
it simply does not appear that this topic has a strong enough following on our network to support the site long-term
That says it all. 
I first heard about this from a system message on the Stack Overflow site. The post Protect intellectual property – but not like this explains their position (in particular, SOPA vs. DMCA) and has a lot of good links to more information.
SOPA-Rope-a-dope has a well written explanation of DNS blocking and DNSSEC.
This bill is a really bad idea. A lot of people in the know agree: An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress.
Congress to Resume SOPA Hearings Next Week (Wednesday 12/21) so it’s not too late to help stop this bill. If you’re like me and have always wondered why people contact their Congressperson, now we finally have a good reason to do so. Go to Stop American Censorship and let your voice be heard.
From RWW Cartoon: SOPA Opera:
UPDATE (12/23/11): Bill that could ‘break the Internet’ delayed until 2012. Also see: What You Need to Know About SOPA in 2012
The new Healthcare IT Stack Exchange site is now open to the public.
Hopefully this thing will take off. So go search, ask, answer, up vote, and (yes) down vote when necessary. Also, don’t forget to tell your friends and colleagues.
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. – Carl Sagan
Wow! It took me 7 months to realize that I had not seen an update from the ZDNet Healthcare blog. The reason is that Dana Blankenhorn was fired around the end of November 2010. Apparently it was his Free and Open Source (FOSS) blogging that lead to his demise at ZDNet. Also see the comments section in this article.
I commented on his Healthcare blog several times and even took issue with him in Access to Medical Data: Are PC Standards and PHRs (You) the Answer?
It looks like ZDNet has not found a replacement for dedicated Healthcare coverage. This means I can remove ‘ZDNet Healthcare Blog RSS’ from my reader feed.
Closer to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A didn’t get close to doing the job. Even after 8 months the commitment level is still at only 60%:
It doesn’t look like Area51 has a time limit on how long a proposal can languish in the Commitment phase, but we’re going to need a lot more support to get to Beta. So go over and sign up today!
Jeff Atwood is a great writer. All of his blog posts are informative and interesting.
How to Write Without Writing is a case in point. It starts off with a clever hook (“trick my fellow programmers”), expounds the benefits of writing, particularly answering questions (“fun sized”) as a way to improve your communication skills. All of this is true.
The worm in the apple of course is the blatant promotion for the Writers Stack Exchange site. You really can’t fault Jeff for doing this though. If you were running a venture funded business that depended on driving traffic, you’d make use of your celebrity in exactly the same way.
This will hopefully not diminish the message that writing can be used as an effective vehicle to gain technical knowledge as well as being a critical professional skill.
That wasn’t as insurmountable and impenetrable as I thought it was going to be.
The reverse psychology I used in Failure to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A is finally starting to work. The question definitions are complete and the commitment phase has begun:
Go over and sign up today.
It seems like a great concept (to me anyway). Grow a community of like-minded Healthcare IT geeks that want to participate in an on-line Q&A site which rewards contribution and facilitates constructive dialog. As of today, it appears unlikely this will happen anytime soon.
Even after being endorsed on HISTalk News 6/25/10 less than 900 people have visited the site.
The attraction that programmers have for Stack Overflow just doesn’t translate for this group of professionals. I suppose it’s the nature of the business.
Anyway, it’s really too bad there isn’t a way for a site like this to gain traction. It would be a valuable HIT resource if it could get off the ground.
About the only thing you can count on in this world, besides taxes and death, is change.
When we moved from Madison to San Diego in 2005, that was a big change. Of course in Jan/Feb the 70 deg temperature difference makes that decision seem pretty smart. When our 12 y/o golden retriever Miles passed away this past Oct. that change really sucked.
Switching jobs is also a big change. As I’ve previously discussed, my old company was purchased and I chose not to relocate. As soon as wrote the words “in-the-trenches” I had an inkling that I had probably jinxed myself. Maybe jinxed isn’t the right word, but I certainly ended up in a different situation than I had imagined.
Last week I started working as a Health Informatics Architect at ResMed, a global leader in sleep medicine and non-invasive ventilation. Like all medical device companies, ResMed is faced with the daunting challenge of providing the therapeutic data produced by their flow generators to physicians and healthcare organizations.
This position will allow me to continue to develop solutions for medical device interoperability, but at a whole new level. Working with a global team at a world-class company is a very exciting opportunity. I’m looking forward to the challenges ahead.
This change is good!
Based on the job description, I am a perfect candidate for this position…
As I’ve previously discussed, my company was sold this past summer. Since then they announced that our operation will be moved to Seattle by the end of the year. SonoSite has been very professional and generous, but I have decided to stay in San Diego.
I made this decision several months ago, but since I will be employed until the end of the year, I have not been very active in my job search. Until now.
So, if you’re reading this you may very well be an employer looking to hire someone like me. You might have gotten here from my Stack Overflow Careers CV or even directly from my resume.
There is one question that I can answer up-front:
Q: What are your long-term career goals? More specifically, do you want to do development or do you want to be a software project manager?
A: This is the fork in the career road that most software engineers eventually get to. I’ve done both and my preference is in-the-trenches software design and development. I get the most enjoyment from building solutions in a collaborative team environment.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Bob
If you’re also looking for a job, I wanted to share a little.
About a month ago I came across a “Principal Software Engineer” position that I thought fit my skills and interests pretty well. I submitted my resume and got a full day interview a couple of weeks later. I hadn’t done an interview in over four years. Here are some of the highlights:
Even though I was not offered the job, the overall experience was generally good (the rejection part sucked). I think their definition of “Principal” was different than mine.
Every company has different interviewing techniques and practices. It seems that large companies have developed the most rigorous (and onerous) methods. Google is known for its over-the-top questions: 15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid. A more pragmatic approach, e.g. How I Hire Programmers, makes sense: “Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them?”. I’m not sure many companies can afford to invest that much in interviewees though.
Speaking of “Are they smart?”, Jonah Lehrer’s article Vince Young talks about the relationship between an IQ test and the performance of NFL quarterbacks. I think the same basic concept applies to developing software products. As important as writing good code is, each engineer must also be able to understand the business needs and really listen to marketing/sales and of course the customer (“emotional intelligence”). There is no IQ test for that. “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration” (Thomas Edison) also applies.
Interviewing is a two-way street so I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code. Don’t forget to ask good questions.
Anyway…
Just like the rest of the job market these days, the competition for all types of developer positions is also pretty intense. The trick will be finding that perfect match between my skills and the employer needs and environment. We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck!
UPDATE (12/3/09): The Codypo Test, aka 8 Questions To Identify A Lame Programming Job
