Health Informatics Personal Statement

Coming from a small town in rural Pakistan, my father from an early age emphasized the importance of education and how it can bring change in society. I was good in studies and was told to be a doctor because my parents liked that. I took their wish as a challenge and crossed all the barriers on first attempt and finally got admission into medical school. Medical school provided me with conducive environment to grow personally as well as on intellectual and professional grounds. While doing clinical rotations in hospital I came to know about lack of standard graduate medical education and evidence based medicine in clinical care. Therefore I decided to pursue further education in USA. I have given all licensing exams and now working hard to get medical residency.

After moving here in USA, I got the

I came to know about different challenges faced by physicians in provision of quality care. I came to the realization that practicing medicine in USA is way different and complex than I imagined. Right from patient privacy, active involvement of case workers and stringent protocols to documentation of every little detail I was amazed at how systematically patient care is being handled in this country. My passion and motivation for further study and research in Health Informatics is driven by intellectual curiosity and my latest work experiences with Dr. Michael Hogarth and Dr. Peter Yellowlees who not only guided me about US health system but also introduced me to health informatics and telemedicine. My knowledge about these desciplines was very limited and I was unable to understand the extent of their work. In the beginning it was difficult to imagine the role of physicians in these fields as in my home country hospital information systems are solely managed by IT experts. However with greater involvement, better understanding of US healthcare system and continous mentoring I