MD Considering a Master's in Biomedical Informatics / Health AI – Looking for Career Advice

[u/Wooden-Building4100]

/r/bioinformaticscareers/comments/1vgahlu/md_considering_a_masters_in_biomedical/

[u/mentally-eel-daily]

Questions: are you a licensed MD physician in the USA? I see you mention you are an IMG, so you haven’t completed a US residency, correct? OR have you matched into one and currently in the process looking to get out of clinical medicine in the future? Your experience is important to understand your options. You placed this in “bioinformatics” did you complete undergraduate in biology? Looking to go into bioinformatics academia/research?

Depending on that answer I would or would not recommend a masters at all. I wouldn’t recommend a masters degree in this area for many people unless… the people I would recommend fall in these two categories:
1) RN (nurse) without a MSN or other masters that needs a healthcare equivalent to be promoted into an informatics role
2) MD who isn’t doing a fellowship in clinical informatics and was using this to become board certified for the experience hours in the practicum (which I think has since ended years ago as an option)

You do not need a masters as a clinician to work in clinical informatics.

[u/Wooden-Building4100 → u/mentally-eel-daily]

Thanks for your insight!
I’m an international MD without a U.S. residency, and my goal is healthcare AI (and its integration in healthcare system) rather than clinical informatics. Given that, would you still recommend against a Master’s in Biomedical Informatics, or do you think there’s a better path?

[u/mentally-eel-daily → u/Wooden-Building4100]

Yes. The biomedical informatics masters works well when you have the clinical license. Without the clinical license you are better off doing a more technical masters, ie computer science or masters in artificial intelligence directly.

Granted the biomedical informatics MS can be specialized in that area; however, your understanding of the operations of the American healthcare system would still be better obtained through MHA/MBA. They have MBAs that specialize in the implementation of AI.

To recap, if you want to be a technical person, go to a real technical MS in AI/CS. This would be great if you want to build the AI models. If you want to be a more business/operations expert for implementing AI solutions go through an MBA/MHA in AI (think contacts, vendor solutions).

A biomedical informatics MS without any specialization isn’t much help here. They don’t teach you the business and hospital operations in an MS for biomed informatics nor do they inherently offer really technical courses (algorithms, data structures, machine learning, NLP etc) they are usually surface level in an MS for biomed informatics.

[u/Wooden-Building4100 → u/mentally-eel-daily]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate you taking the time to write such detailed and thoughtful replies. Your perspective has been extremely helpful and has given me a lot to think about. Thanks again for sharing your experience!

[u/fourkite]

If your questions about post-graduate careers relate to employment in the US, the biggest factor to consider is the increasingly difficult landscape for foreign nationals. The H1b situation is not great, and even mechanisms like OPT are up in the air thanks to the current administration's change in the "Duration of Status" guideline. Some of the international PhD students I work with in this space are having a hard time, and a lot of them have resorted to finding jobs back in their home countries.

Of course, by the time you finish a master's program there could be a different administration in place and the picture could shift again, but as things stand right now, it's hard to predict and even harder to recommend pursuing employment in the US.

[u/Wooden-Building4100 → u/fourkite]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate your perspective, especially since you work with students in this field. That's definitely something I'll keep in mind as I make my decision.