Physicians with Dual Professions – Doctor and IT Informatics Combined

This is really a good thing, whether it is a degree or just a physician that “gets it” to help others. In an upcoming interview to be published soon I talked about Long Beach Memorial and their transition to electronic medical records and how the plant was laid out for “super users” to help other along. When you have individuals that really have a full concise understanding in both areas, this is definitely a winning situation. BD

RUSS CUCINA, 37, lives a double life. For two months of the year, he practices internal medicine, treating patients at the UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco. The rest of the year, he helps the hospital develop its electronic medical records and other data systems.

As a medical doctor who also has a master’s degree in biomedical informatics, Dr. Cucina has a foot in both worlds — medicine and technology — and can bridge the sometimes daunting gap between them.

“I’m the glue between the I.T. enterprise and the clinical leadership,” said Dr. Cucina, the hospital’s associate medical director of information technology. “Because I have the vocabulary of both sides, I can serve as translator between them.”

“The health I.T. people run the servers and install software, but the informatics people are the leaders, who interpret and analyze information and work with the clinical staff,” said William Hersh, chairman of the department of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology at Oregon Health and Science University.