2014 Starts with a Bang!

Such an exciting year ahead of me. I’ll turn 40 this year. There’s a very reasonable chance I’ve lived more than half my life. The first half didn’t suck, but it sure had a lot of challenges. I’m sure the second half will present its own new ones.  But I feel confident and ready for them. I’m doing well. I’m sober and reasonably sane and happy and productive. And I’m in the best physical condition of my life. These are good things. You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to be 30 again.

And 2014 is looking to be a good year. I’m excited to move into my new home. To explore my deepening relationship. To pursue my professional life. So many things to anticipate.

And 2014 has begun in about the best way possible. My first major research paper for MECMC was accepted by a very respectable medical journal. Well, technically, they still want minor revisions, but the review to which I need to respond has no particular demands. Just a few general statements that I can square in the discussion and future work. The journal is second-tier specialty, which is about where most of my papers end up. And I’m very pleased with that.

I am publishing engineering in the medical literature. It’s a very small niche. My goal is to get more people like me doing hypothesis-driven engineering in medical centers to improve quality and performance in the delivery of health care. There are other journals where I would be more likely to get people like me to read my work. But I’m less interested in that. I believe that to get people like me doing the kind of work I do hired by hospitals – which could, I believe, dramatically improve care-delivery – we need to get physicians on board with systems engineering.

And the only way to do that, is to publish on pages that will pass before the physician’s eyes. If I can do that, then, when administrators are looking for evidence-based policy solutions using engineering methods, tech-savvy physicians will be supportive, because they’ll have been exposed to the concepts. I’m never going to publish glam. I’m never going to be a famous researcher. But if I can get articles into sub-specialty journals that physicians read, then I believe I’ll be an academic success. And today, I think I made a big step on that journey.

Happy New Year. To all of us.