A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast

Imaging Informatics: Radiology Technologist Can Learn AI

January 11, 2024 Chaundria Singleton Season 5 Episode 2
Imaging Informatics: Radiology Technologist Can Learn AI
A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast
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A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast
Imaging Informatics: Radiology Technologist Can Learn AI
Jan 11, 2024 Season 5 Episode 2
Chaundria Singleton

Imaging Informatics: Radiology Technologist Can Learn AI

Welcome to A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast, where we explore the world of medical imaging and informatics. In this episode, our host, Chaundria Singleton, chats with Ameena Elahi, an imaging informatics and application manager at Penn Medicine. Ameena shares her journey from starting as an X-ray technologist to transitioning to information services and how she accidentally got into informatics. They delve into the challenges and triumphs of navigating a career in imaging informatics, as well as the evolving role of technology in the field. The conversation sheds light on the day-to-day responsibilities in imaging informatics, the importance of communication and organization in running projects, and the value of mentorship and continued education for professionals in this rapidly advancing field. As Ameena shares her experiences and insights, listeners can gain valuable knowledge about the transition from clinical roles to informatics, the future of informatics with AI, and the significance of mentorship and sponsorship in career growth. So, join us as we uncover the world of imaging informatics and gain valuable insights from Ameena Elahi's expertise and journey.

Connect with Ameena
Linkedin
Email: ameenaelahi.ae@gmail.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Only this January, they help you gear up to crush your 2024 fully focused.

You get 1 month for free, when you're subscribing for 3 months at:

🌱MAGIC MIND Discount here
Use code: RADTECHS20
It's an extra 20% off, which gets you to a 75% off. This only lasts until the end of January, so hurry up before it goes away.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Imaging informatics, Informatics career, Stress in informatics, Transition in informatics, Technology evolution, System performance, Project management, Clinical imaging teams, Data analysis, Analyst role, Project coordination, Communication skills, Training in informatics, Informatics education, Informatics technologists, Mentorship in informatics, Networking in informatics, Radiologic Technologists, Artificial intelligence in informatics, Continuing education, Rad Techs, Efficiency in informatics, CIP certification, Society of Imaging Informatics and Medicine, Industry experience, Coding skills, Project management skills, Sponsorship in informatics, AI opportunities

imaging informatics
medical imaging informatics
imaging informatics job description
what is medical imaging informatics
what is the role of imaging informatics?
imaging science and informatics radiology
what are the several fields of imaging informatics?
imaging informatics job
imaging informatics

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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Imaging Informatics: Radiology Technologist Can Learn AI

Welcome to A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast, where we explore the world of medical imaging and informatics. In this episode, our host, Chaundria Singleton, chats with Ameena Elahi, an imaging informatics and application manager at Penn Medicine. Ameena shares her journey from starting as an X-ray technologist to transitioning to information services and how she accidentally got into informatics. They delve into the challenges and triumphs of navigating a career in imaging informatics, as well as the evolving role of technology in the field. The conversation sheds light on the day-to-day responsibilities in imaging informatics, the importance of communication and organization in running projects, and the value of mentorship and continued education for professionals in this rapidly advancing field. As Ameena shares her experiences and insights, listeners can gain valuable knowledge about the transition from clinical roles to informatics, the future of informatics with AI, and the significance of mentorship and sponsorship in career growth. So, join us as we uncover the world of imaging informatics and gain valuable insights from Ameena Elahi's expertise and journey.

Connect with Ameena
Linkedin
Email: ameenaelahi.ae@gmail.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Only this January, they help you gear up to crush your 2024 fully focused.

You get 1 month for free, when you're subscribing for 3 months at:

🌱MAGIC MIND Discount here
Use code: RADTECHS20
It's an extra 20% off, which gets you to a 75% off. This only lasts until the end of January, so hurry up before it goes away.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Imaging informatics, Informatics career, Stress in informatics, Transition in informatics, Technology evolution, System performance, Project management, Clinical imaging teams, Data analysis, Analyst role, Project coordination, Communication skills, Training in informatics, Informatics education, Informatics technologists, Mentorship in informatics, Networking in informatics, Radiologic Technologists, Artificial intelligence in informatics, Continuing education, Rad Techs, Efficiency in informatics, CIP certification, Society of Imaging Informatics and Medicine, Industry experience, Coding skills, Project management skills, Sponsorship in informatics, AI opportunities

imaging informatics
medical imaging informatics
imaging informatics job description
what is medical imaging informatics
what is the role of imaging informatics?
imaging science and informatics radiology
what are the several fields of imaging informatics?
imaging informatics job
imaging informatics

Send us a Text Message.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the Show.

Thanks for listening to this episode on A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast! If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button to be notified of our latest episodes. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time!

Chaundria:

Welcome everyone to a Couple Of Rad Techs Podcast. I'm Chaundria Singleton, and we have an amazing episode in store for you today. Before I get into our episode, I do want to thank our sponsors, Magic Mind. We're going to talk more about it a little further into our episode, but thank you Magic Mind for sponsoring this episode. We have Ameena Elahi and we're going to talk radiology informatics today. I'm just going to give you a brief overview of her bio, because I want to jump right into this episode. If you are listening, if you're watching us, please, please, please take your pen and paper out, make mental notes. She's an imaging informatics and applications manager at Penn Medicine. She's responsible for project oversight for image applications, including research and artificial intelligence. Yes, AI. She began her career as an X ray Technologist in 2014. You guys, if you listen to me, you know, I'm always telling people when they want to know, should they go to school for x ray or just straight to another modality, I always encourage start at the top of the umbrella and everything else would trickle down for you. I mean, it's transitioned from x ray technologies to information services. She has a BS in health administration from Drexel, a master's in public administration from Keller. And she's currently enrolled in the university of Pennsylvania's organization dynamics master's program. Yes. I bring the best to you guys. Welcome Ameena.

Ameena:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Chaundria:

We are excited to have you. We're going to have a conversation. This is not scripted. You guys, we have not talked ahead of time, but I know I have a lot of questions about informatics. As an introduction, I gave a brief bio, but tell us a little bit about how you started in medical imaging radiology before you went over to informatics.

Ameena:

Very similar informatics. It was kind of an accident. A very happy accident. I was a business major in undergrad, and I just decided actually don't want to do this. Or what will I be doing when I finish? And I ran across what still my best friend right now, Stephanie Barnes, who was telling me about her major and I looked it up and I was like medical imaging, but I honestly had no idea what it was. I still enrolled and I thought I was gonna be doing baby ultrasounds like many people do coming in. Right? I did not move past my rotation ultrasound. Only a month of that. I've been at the University of Penn AKA Penn Medicine, for just over 20 years now, which is unbelievable. But I started off over nights in bone chest, you know, portables, OR, ER, trauma, and then I spent the next five and a half years in IR. Following that I was a coordinator and I learned so much from every position, but I'm also someone who's easily bored. Once I really do something, you know, 2000 times, I'm ready to do something else. But I still love being a tech and I will keep my license up until I'm 95. The way I got in informatics. It was honestly luck. Yes, I'm a hard worker, but I was working on a project as a coordinator where I was working on the front end of our image exchange application and working with I T. to help improve it and we got a conversation going once or twice and he basically he's still my boss is like you should apply to this position and I turned it down.

Chaundria:

Oh, wow.

Ameena:

Multiple times.

Chaundria:

Wait, why did you turn it down?

Ameena:

So when I was telling you before that I'm easily bored. I'm always been interested in a lot of things. I thought I would stay a tech, but I thought I would be in different avenues, I was never a super technical person, you know, last to get a smartphone. I was considering going back to school for chemistry. Can I find another coordinator position? Which I was applying to and although they weren't patient facing, they always had nursing preferred and I couldn't get an interview. But I finished my master's and masters wasn't even required. I just couldn't get an interview. When I was asking him a question about, if he had a project management background, because I really enjoyed the way we work together and he actually did. And then he actually saw an Excel for dummies book on my desk. And he was like, is that yours? And I was like, a little embarrassed. I was like, yeah, he's like, well, why did you get it? I was like, I just wanted to learn it. Outside of some basic things I never really used Excel. I'm someone who's always like self educating and doing continuing education as well as formal. To answer your question, long story short, of all the jobs I was considering in past. I did not consider anything technical because I am not by nature a technical person. But he further explained to me, he was like, well, just tell me more about what you want to do. I was like, in short, I want to get behind the problem to prevent it from starting. Right. I want to work on things to help make them more efficient. And he was like, I am telling you right now. This is exactly where you want to be. You will get to do this and so much more. And I'm so happy. I eventually said yes, the same way I'm happy I just almost randomly became a tech because it's been a game changer.

Chaundria:

I agree, I didn't know what it was either. And it's so funny because I had exams all of my life. I had gut issues and I've had a lot of the fluoroscopy exams. And I didn't know they were Radiologic Technologists. I just assumed they were nurses. I'll be honest with you. My parents didn't know. And my uncle became a Rad Tech. And I just knew he had this great schedule. Him and his wife had a great lifestyle. And becoming older, he was like, I think you should go to school for radiology. I didn't really know what it was and that is why I did this podcast and have great guests on like you. Because a lot of people send me messages asking, I'm getting older in the field of radiology, my body can't do more. I want to kind of transition out of patient care. I want to leave this for the younger people." Or the younger people may be coming out of radiology school and say,"I want to learn this AI." Tell us a little more. How did it transition from there?

Ameena:

It wasn't like, I applied and then 2 weeks, I was into the open position. They were creating a new team. It took a few months. It wasn't a full year. You know, transitioning in, he told me about a certification. The C. I. I. P. is a certification for imaging informatics professionals. Which is under AMIA which is under ARRT. And that was a way for me to get more familiar, but I will tell you, there was no formal training, right? Typically If you're not on the PACS team, and at the time you would get formal PACS training, they might even send you away. Or if you're not on the EMR team, they'll send you away and you could get certified. There's really no one training you. So I had to learn, I'm gonna be very clear, I did not do it all on my own. I had to figure out a lot of it on my own. So it was, really stressful in the beginning. About the first year, year and a half, I was like, did I make the wrong decision? And I had a lot of anxiety about it. It wasn't until we got a new PAC system and I was starting with other people on different teams at the same level. And I was like, Oh, I'm okay. And then a little later, I was like, Oh, I actually was doing better than I thought I was in the beginning. But I would never want anyone to have that kind of stress. So everyone coming in, after me, especially if they have a tech background, I try to make it easier for them. And then I hope that next person makes it even easier for the next person to transition. Kind of a lot of what you're saying, I've had so many people reach out to me or like, you know, what's been 25 years or even less and like my back's killing me. All the things right? How do I get in? Or I'm ready to try something new. As well as people still in school who are like Oh, that's what I would actually like to do. I love spreading the word. It's an amazing career. It's so diverse. There is no one specific thing. You can be in projects. Having techs in this field, being able to navigate between clinical and I T. is a plus and it's just really been good to me.

Chaundria:

Yeah, I could tell. It's a few things you said I want to unpack because I have the same vision. I know how hard it was when I tried to move over into MRI. There were no schools out there. and people weren't as readily happy to train you. Some people feel like you should stay over there. And it was hard for me. The path that I went getting to MRI, I would never wish that on my worst enemy. My goal like yours is I want to be encouraging and help people where I can to move where they want to be. And do it in a way where it does not have to stress people out and make it difficult for people because this field has over 11 modalities. And when I started, there were only maybe five or six. Now it's 11 and growing. So there's opportunity for everyone. And some may be listening and say, I understand the anxiety Ameena was talking about. Especially techs that have been in a game for a while. You have flashbacks of how you were treated in x ray school. It's like, I don't want to go through that again. I don't feel like being a student again. I don't have the life in me to go back to school. Because that's very relatable and I feel like you have so much that a lot of people are going to want to reach out to you and learn about this informatics. So for someone listening, what is informatics? What is like a day in the life of an informatics Technologist?

Ameena:

Informatics is very broad. Imaging informatics narrows it a little bit. The basics that I could say is it's everything to do with making sure clinicians can easily see an image. That goes with the storing of the studies, pulling studies from the archive, all the tools associated you know, on the system. And it's not just PACS, while PACS is one of our most powerful systems in the game. At the facility, we have over 80 systems that our clinical imaging group supports. And as you mentioned earlier, over the past few years, we've really been blowing up in artificial intelligence. A day in the life when I started as an analyst and for my teammates. Everyone's responsible for at least one application as their primary first thing you do when you log in, you make sure the application is up and running. There's no issues with slowness. You may want to check on how many users are logged on you generally like to have an idea of what the peak performance is so you can get ahead of potential issues because of that peak performance and you have projects. The medical imaging management, we're projects team. So we do support some main applications, including our vendor neutral archive, which is also very powerful. But outside of projects for those specific applications, we have other projects with anything related to imaging. We have two support teams. Clinical Imaging Support Team, CIST, formerly known as the PACS team, right? Their support and their more boots on the ground. Although since the pandemic, a lot of them are also remote right? They'll just rotate the schedule and get to work home up to like, 4 days a week, which is really nice and do the support on the back end from home. And that support can look anything like going into the settings and, changing how the information looks, it could be building display protocols. It could be figuring out why somebody's computer isn't launching.

Chaundria:

Well that gives a good idea because as someone like me who All I know is like the basic packs that I had when they first started rolling packs out years ago. We did everything by film and developer. And once the digital age started coming in, it was new for us. And then you got a PACS team. In our mind, a lot of times it's most technologists out there. We only think about what we see. And that is the PACS teams coming around or we calling them to unlink something, it's even further than that now. When you talk about projects, give us an idea because when I think an analyst, my mind goes hard for me to be an analyst. I'm like, Oh my goodness. I don't think I could do that. But explain to us regular techs out there. What is a job say one of your projects that you might do? What was some of the things that you have to deal with on one of those projects that we can relate to?

Ameena:

The title of analyst is also a very broad title. We have hundreds within my department. We have about 27 in my group right now. If you're running a project, again, it varies. We have some projects that take a couple of years, some projects that are a matter of months. Let's take a project where the analyst is in charge of all the project coordination. One of the projects could be an update to one of the systems. Now, sometimes updates are largely put on with the vendor has to do, but there are other things that has to be done on our side. Testing, right? You need to make sure that all the tools, even the most basic ones are working. You need to make sure that your test environment mirrors your production environment and you need to go around and get feedback from the end users and typically you would identify a clinical champion. A tech and clinician and someone in leadership on that side to help create buy in for what's to come so the upgrade the complete change of a system or just installing a net new system that we haven't seen before. And running projects, besides communicating with people, organization. Making sure that the team is frequently updated, whether it's once a week, making sure people get notes after meetings. I think one of the hardest things that I have seen when people transition from clinical roles to informatics is, running the meetings and worrying about how technical they have to be. There are configurations, but I will tell you it's not that hard. Now, I want to be clear. It's easy for me to say now I've been doing this for over 8 years. But there are many configurations where there are simple steps you have to do. It doesn't mean everything's going to go perfectly. And once you know how to troubleshoot those steps, just like you have to, get creative, when you're X raying certain patients. It really does translate and I love that clinical people can let the more technical people can let them know, why something is a priority and help triage. Yeah, a little bit of everything. But a lot of it's running the projects again is about the communication. It's about the documentation training if necessary and creating buy in.

Chaundria:

Thank you for opening our eyes to what an imaging informaticist does. My mind is a little blown and processing everything you just said. So I'm going to jump over and talk about that Magic Mind that I was telling you guys about because the magic mind is amazing. I found this months before and it's this little green drink and they are our sponsors for this episode today. Let me tell you just my own personal experience. My husband and I actually drink this every morning because I struggle with keeping my energy up. Working 12 hour shifts as medical professionals or whatever shift you're working or just day to day. I need a nap in the middle of the day. And the naps weren't cutting it, especially as the days started getting shorter, started getting darker longer, that seasonal time change, I just wasn't getting enough. And my focus was going down during the day, and we need our focus to be there for our patients to get home in this traffic. If you live in a place like me, and for some of you, it may be coffee, but for me, I needed a nap. Thankfully, I found this little shot to help me get my energy back and become fully focused. I take it because it's easy. Literally pop this baby out of the refrigerator, open it, drink it down either on my ride or before I walk out of the door. And it actually tastes great. Don't let the green color fool you. My husband is not a green drinker. I cannot get him to drink anything green, but he started taking mine and he orders his own now he loves it. Because he has sleep apnea, he's noticed that his focus is even better through the rest of the day as he works in the OR. Now, I've noticed more mental sharpness, being faster at things, and actually is consistent throughout the day. It's not like a spike, and then I get dropped down. I'm going to tell you what is inside of this little green drink. Some stuff to make it a little sweet too. I'm way more creative, I'm a creative person, but I'm even more creative when I take my Magic Mind. My mood is more upbeat. The winter time, our mood kind of gets a little lower because the sun is not out. What is in this drink that makes it taste so good and that's so good for you? A lot of you love matcha. Matcha is inside of here. Ashwagandha. All of these things are great for our brain. Now, two mushrooms. Lion's Mane Mushrooms. Cordyceps Mushrooms. The other two ingredients, you guys do not want me to butcher them. They are really hard, but they're good for memory and good for stress. I drink two bottles and I saw a difference. My husband drank about two or three bottles. He saw a difference within days and he was sold after that. My mom, I gave her some of mine and she didn't want to drink them at first. I thought I was coming back to get my bottles and then she drank them. Then she started ordering her own. A radiology manager. She and her husband ordered them now. It is really tasty, but good for brain health, mental focus. Increases your energy. So the month of January Magic Mind has given me the opportunity by sponsoring this video to let my audience know that they can have two options. You can either do a single order and get 20 percent off or you can get 56 percent off if you do a month subscription, you also can get 75 percent off if you do a three month subscription using my code. RAD TECHS 20. If you're watching it, I'm going to put it right up here on the screen. And if you go down to the description, you can grab it. If you go to www. Magicmind. com be sure to use the code. Okay, so now we've talked about what is an informatics technologist. What kind of education is required, Ameena?

Ameena:

Absolutely no additional education. So while going to school and studying informatics will make you more marketable, I'm telling you as a hiring manager. We are looking first, for people with experience, but we always run into that issue of, well, how do I get the experience? If no one will give me the experience. When people reach out to me about how to get into the field, I tell them a few things. You can look into that CIP certification that I was mentioning earlier as well as getting involved with the society of imaging informatics and medicine. But extra stretch projects, reach out to your informatics team. And ask them, what are they looking for specifically? We can't have a team, all of non super technical people. We like to have a pretty diverse team and background, people who are coding, people who know networking, people who can run projects. It doesn't mean to say that a tech who's not technical cannot become super technical and cannot be a coder or developer. I work with some of the top people in the industry and, some of them people don't have degrees and some have degrees in things like psychology. But they were self taught. There are a lot of free things you can find out there. Honestly, you will likely go to a Youtube rabbit hole trying to identify how to get there because there isn't a lot of information specifically on imaging informaticists so really finding someone who's willing to, mentor you through that process and identify things that you could work on. Find out what your institution is looking for.

Chaundria:

Those are good because my question was going to be next about, about skills needed, you just helped us to appreciate things that someone without a technical background, but has the experience as a technologist which is very valuable in informatics. I love how you're helping us as Technologists to see, because I think a lot of times we forget that we do have a vital role. We're the third largest medical profession in the world for a reason. And you've been doing this for over 20 years. You have the experience you've done x ray, you've done intervention. And many Technologists out there have a lot of skills that they just have not realized and been mentored enough to do that. I want to talk a little bit about mentorship. We talked a little bit about that earlier and how my experience with. X ray school and learning CT. I had a lot of mentorship. I was spoiled because I learned CT my second year in X ray school. It was actually the manager and her lead Technologist who really encouraged me to start my own business when I got out of school. They really were encouraging and making sure I learned how to do IV placements that I was like the best CT Technologist and they made sure I got paid what I deserve. We talked money. They were like, this is what you go in and ask for. Don't take less. They mentored me even when I didn't do well in scans. They were like, this is how you do it. They taught me. I don't know that we really have that because my MR experience was totally different. I was not mentored. It was. Not a very good experience. It was very anxious. One that I have learned that I would never want anybody else to go through. Tell us about mentorship and imaging informaticist. Tell us about your mentorship because it sounds to me as you told your story, how you got into it, you had someone that believed in you. They saw it in you, even though you turned it down a few times, they were like a mentor.

Ameena:

A mentor and more specifically a sponsor. In the beginning of my career, while I had people that I loved and may have helped me early on just coming out of school, I was still scared of patients. I had an amazing team who made me feel very comfortable in my environment and confidence in what I went to school for. But as I went through different roles, you know you get the good job, but no one's helping you advance. Even when you ask the question. And I don't think it's always because people don't want to help. I think people don't know how to help or they're like, well, you have a good job, but I want to do more. So, around the 10-12 year mark, as I was a coordinator, I would say my manager at the time, Tom Kelly was. A decent mentor and helping me advance into more administrative roles, but it was more along the lines of, I can have his job when he retires in like 10 years. He's a great mentor, right? But he's even a better sponsor. So a mentor is someone who guides you and sometimes those relationships form naturally. Other times you can actually ask for a mentor, maybe not say those specific words. But letting someone know that you are looking for guidance in your career path is so important. I don't have just one mentor, I have many mentors. And they do different things, they serve different purposes. I have clinicians as mentors, other informaticists, people in administration from IS and from clinical. And people outside of my organization that I've been able to collaborate with. So when I have a question, like, I want to write my first paper. I was really nervous about it. I didn't really know what I was doing, hadn't written the paper outside of school. The first person I asked, they were like, well, you know, it's going to be really hard. And I was just like, thanks. But my director was pretty encouraging and she was like, hey, how about you ask these people? And they jumped on it. So eager to help me. One of those people was a mentor of mine who was in research. He used to be a tech who also became very technical and amazing sequel developer, and they got me through it. Like I wrote the whole paper myself with them as coauthors, and I had a lot of guidance, but who knows where I would have landed if it wasn't for their help. I spoke about sponsors a little bit as well. Sometimes people don't have the time to mentor you and mentoring doesn't mean it has to be we meet every month on this Tuesday. Some people are just better sponsors, right? They'll put you up for things like, Oh, you know what? I see Ameena wants to write papers now. I never even considered techs wanting to write papers. And invite you to write more papers. Same thing with my first talk. So nervous. I still get nervous. Now I have people who will reach out to me and say, Hey, you know what? I think you'll be great for this talk. And it's just been things like that, that have really changed the game for me. I didn't know how much I needed mentorship. And I really don't think a lot of people in allied health actually know that they need to be and how to be mentors. And I like to continuously pass it on. So anybody who reaches out to me at any time. Who wants to know a little bit more about imaging informatics, any aspect of my career. I always respond and I will at least have 1 call with them.

Chaundria:

Oh, wow. That's amazing because you hit on things that I hadn't even thought about with the sponsorship. There is a difference. There is a huge difference. And one is not better than the other. I think having both is so valuable. As you were talking, I said, I think I've been a sponsor a lot of times. Which is a good thing because I'm that kind of person I'm like, if I see something and it's not for me, oh, I know somebody. I think a lot of us in radiology in medical imaging don't understand the power of networking. We're such a kind of quiet modality or medical profession, which maybe we've been made to be that way because we usually ignored. It's always this negative connotation with our profession and it's so untrue, but I think we've kind of fallen into it. Into the stereotype of what medical imaging is and just stay quiet. But I love the fact that more people who are so qualified like yourself are coming out and articulating so well what the medical profession has within it, which is medical imaging and radiology. And it's beyond even just dealing with patients. Our scope is, I mean, like I'm just blown away listening to you. I had no clue informatics was any of this, and I'm sure we're just scraping the surface, but that mentorship is what I feel like you are going to excel at because as you continue to let people know what you do and that you are available for mentorship, pretty sure you're going to have to start creating something for that because lot of people are looking for it and they need it. I try to encourage people get on LinkedIn, do more in LinkedIn really get with other people without the idea that you have to get something. I think knowledge is truly power and gaining the knowledge from people, and sometimes it takes being around them, some things people just can't tell you. We have so many things. I mean, AI is just going to blow a lot of things out of the water. I'm excited. I want to talk to what advice would you have a radiology professionals? If you could summarize maybe being an informaticist. Excelling, moving to another level after you've been in the field for a while, what advice would you give radiology professionals? Because you've done that after 8 or 10 years as a Technologist, you move from patient care over to the computer, the technical side. Tell us what advice would you have for us?

Ameena:

A couple things I would say. One, before you make a major career change, shadow someone. Request informationals. Don't do what you may have done in high school and you didn't actually do it. Find out what someone's role is. Imaging informatics, sky's the limit. And there's, everyone has different roles and does different things. You don't want to jump into something and turns out you don't like it, right? Other things I would say in general whether or not you decide to move on to do something else or not, continuing education is key. It doesn't need to be formal classes if that's not your thing, but learning outside of, what you typically do just expand your mind and allows you to think more creative.

Chaundria:

I like that you said invest in continual education. I started learning about being an applications Technologist early on in my career. I had a good friend worked for GE and she always would do and I'm like, man, she had big nice house. In a part of town in Atlanta that was super expensive, her and her husband really nice. And I just was like, it was rare that I saw a female applications Technologist, number one. She was a Hispanic Latina. Middle aged woman, that was even more rare to see as an applications Technologist. And we would just, we would request her to come and do our in services. Like she was just a really good person and she knew it like the back of her hand. I remember her telling every last one of us you all should be doing this and out of that group of us, one is a director of something, something in the cancer center in Boston. The other girl went to Florida. She's a manager down in Florida of a big hospital. The other girl was over a heart center and I'm doing my thing. Sometimes you just need that person to tell you that you can do it. But I also invested my own money into sending myself to applications training at Siemens.

Ameena:

You have to invest in yourself. We have to invest in ourselves.

Chaundria:

Yeah. It wasn't cheap but I'm gonna tell you I turned around and booked several jobs that year and I credit that to investing in myself. Nobody knew I paid for that but my family. I think what it did for me was gave me even more confidence in what I could do I think I just had a whole nother attitude about me. And that's what getting quality continual education and investing in yourself does for you. I find that some people they want to move to another modality. Like I just had a live on social media and people were saying, well, how do I move to another, everybody wants on a job training. That's not always possible. You have to sometimes maybe pay three, four thousand dollars to go to an MRI school if you want to be an MRI Technologist, you got to pay the people for the knowledge they're giving you and you have to pay them for giving you the clinical exams. My thing is, if your job tells you we'll cross train you, I'm going to tell you, you're not going to get all the exams you need because their priority is to have you there for what they're paying you for. And that's, if that's to do x ray or CT, that's what you're going to be doing. And you only got two years to get those exams. Pay the three, 4, 000, go to the school, take the registry and be done. What are you going to make after that? Your pay is going to go up. You can probably make what you need to make the pay 4, 000 in a month back with a travel assignment. I love, like you said, invest, you have to invest. If you could tell everybody how can they connect with you? Do you have social media email? Where can they connect the website?

Ameena:

My website is actually under construction and I am working on developing a course. That has very concrete details of how people can get into informatics without necessarily getting a formal degree. I'm under my name. Ameena Elahi. LinkedIn and Facebook.

Chaundria:

Great. And we're going to put everything in the description. What do you think the future of informatics is going to be for us imaging Technologists?

Ameena:

The future of informatics is going to have Rad Techs getting involved in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is here to stay. It's not going anywhere and is going to further evolve. One of the ways to help you transition, or just to be a little happier in your role and help your role. Techs are good at workflows, right, but make sure you're documenting those workflows every step that happens and what's happening in between the steps that may be seemingly invisible and how to improve those steps. And imaging informaticists literally do that all day. The skills are there and that is not going anywhere. It's going to continue to evolve. Everything is about how to make things more efficiency while providing the best patient care.

Chaundria:

Oh my goodness. I will be the first one in that course when you get it started. I'm excited. This was a great conversation. I have been waiting on this interview all week long and you did not disappoint. And I forgot to mention you guys, she is an author. She authors articles, scientific abstracts, and you are just amazing. Thank you, Ameena, for being our guest. Be sure if you're watching this to subscribe on YouTube, make sure you follow me on LinkedIn. Thank you all for taking the time out to listen and learn about radiology.

And that's a wrap for this episode of a couple of rad techs podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion of the fascinating world of radiology and learn something new about the role we play in the healthcare industry. If you have any questions or topics that you love for us to cover, feel free to reach out and let us know what they are. And you guys, please, if you enjoyed this podcast or any of the other episodes, we want to hear what you. Thought leave us a review. Mama's got to pay our bills. It helps. And until next time, stay tuned for more insightful and informative episodes of a couple of rad techs podcast.

Introduction
Struggling to find work despite qualifications and education.
sharing tech experience to help others transition.
Informatics experience > education. Seek CIP certification and stretch projects.
Radiology underrepresented, need for mentorship in medical imaging and informatics.