Definitely going to check this out, especially as someone applying to medical school. Came upon the same problem with Anki, it's great for memorization but challenging to make a ton of cards.
An aside question: For incoming med students interested in tech, would it be worthwhile to learn programming? I know it would be great for research. But as someone who is unsure about becoming a clinician scientist, it might be a waste of time to learn programming concurrently during med school.
I agree with "automate the boring stuff with python." It's actually the first book I used to learn Python.
I think it would be good if you learn it prior to going in. You just won't have time to do any programming learning in med school. Med school is more than a full time job by itself.
You may have more time, once in practice. I recall a couple of decades ago, it seemed every doctor in the country was learning to program, so he could automate his office. But, it turned out that was taken over by large corporations (as usual!) capitalizing on the need to integrate patient records with big hospitals and insurance systems.
Interesting, I always thought that residency got busier than med school, I guess it depends on residency type (e.g., surgical, radiology(?), etc). As a resident, do you see any startup opportunities within medicine? For example, I've seen some companies being started around machine learning in say, rad onc or radiology. Wondering how often findings from academic university research laboratories get translated into companies. Of course, there is the occasional biotech startup from wet labs.
I have many friends who are doctors and the one thing nearly all of them agree on regardless of age, school, or specialty, is that you really don't have time to do anything in med school other than go to med school. Especially something that takes blocks of time as large as programming.
I would say some programming skill is useful for anyone in the modern world, but I would just learn some Python and data manipulation tools. Something like Automate the Boring Stuff with Python would be good.
As someone whose intention is to go to Medical School and pick up programming (+ math skills) to potentially work at the intersection of ML + Healthcare, the knowledge of the regulatory hurdles expressed is discouraging. Not sure if it really is worth the effort to study tech on top of medicine. Are there any people with experience within ML + Healthcare/Medicine or know of startups that are making great strides within this realm?
I used to work in the healthcare vertical. While there are regulatory hurdles, they are there for good reason. Move fast and break things does not work in this industry and will get you fired.
You will have better luck working with one of the larger companies who have a good history with the FDA, and more importantly, have good relationships with hospitals and physicians. They are aware of the time and resources it takes to push something out. Pay will not be FAANG level or anywhere close, but they usually have great work culture and WLB.
Thanks for the comment. Do you have any feedback for a future physician interested within the intersection of ML + medicine (does not strictly need to be "healthcare")? Would learning ML and all the other things needed to know be helpful (huge time investment needed here)? Ultimately, would be interested in leveraging medical knowledge into a startup capacity.
As a traditional physician, I imagine your value add would still be your domain expertise. The physicians I worked with were purely consumers of AI tech and had a say in the design of the software. But AI and more generally software is becoming an important part of medicine so I guess it couldn't hurt to learn some basic ML.
When I was an MD/PhD student in 2017-2018, there were only a handful of labs specializing in applied medical ML and computational biology. Since leaving to work as an ML eng/backend eng, I have been surprised by how the relationships between academics, practitioners, and investors in pure software contribute to a positively reinforcing loop. On the medicine side, the academics lean towards software skepticism, the investors make fewer and safer bets to compensate for historically lower margins/growth/return multiples compared to pure software, and the subset of practitioners get payed orders of magnitude less and have correspondingly less engineering development. The differences affect everything from managerial quality, skill and career development, location flexibility, upward mobility, product scope and impact.
Thanks for the analysis. Can't say I understood much, but the concept of automating venture investment is an interesting idea. As a side question, what would you recommend a total beginner to learn if they wanted to go from 0 to being competent at neural networks, or machine learning in general. I'm currently dabbling with R in grad school (biology), and I know Python is big within the machine learning world.
Is there a pathway you would recommend (e.g., first learn Python until you're familiar in X, Y, Z, then make sure to learn the required mathematics... etc)? Also, how long would this process of learning roughly take? Been thinking of potentially changing fields after grad school, or maybe working at the intersection of ML and medicine.
I got started with Andrew Ng's Coursera ML course in 2012, and have been learning ML ever since. I think a very diligent student could catch up in half the time (about 5 years).
How do you develop your story plot? I have been meaning to write a short story and can develop an interesting first "scene" in my mind, but then the story narrative falls flat as I cannot think of what would come next.
I think I know exactly what you're describing, and I'm still getting the hang of plot development! It's so easy for me to write down an enticing first chapter, and then wonder..."Now what?"
For me, what's been helping is sitting down and plotting the narrative in advance. I used to be a "pantser" - what they call writers who just sit down and see where the story takes them. But that would always leave me in that limbo above, where after a certain point the story just seems to drag and I don't know where to go next.
Because one of my goals is to have my stories bring in an income, I strive to write "to market". This means I look at common tropes and story structures in my chosen genre and follow that formula. So usually the minimum I have to get started is the genre and some semblance of setting: eg "I'll write a science fiction planetary adventure with romantic elements" - and I will have a beat sheet for that genre.
However, that really only provides me with a basic beat-skeleton, the plot details and conflict etc still need to be clarified within that skeleton.
For that, I've been using Plottr and planning out chapter by chapter and scene by scene. You don't need this particular software to do it, but I find it makes it easy for me to create a simple timeline of the book from the perspectives of all main characters. Because I am writing in a series and timelines intertwine between books sometimes, I also use it to keep all of those major intertwined plot points in sync. Plottr also contains several templates for that earlier genre-specific formula I described, so you can flesh out the plot with the major beats in mind.
For me, the hardest part is the climax. Coming up with something that feels major enough to constitute the main conflict in the book gets a bit daunting, but I'm improving with practice.
If I'm not sure where to take the story while plotting, asking the main protagonist(s) questions usually helps. The character's final goal and desire can really clarify in what direction to take the story. Examples of things I've paused and asked while plotting (with example answers):
* What does this character think they want? - To have an exciting adventure.
* Why do they want this? - To prove to their friends and family that they're exciting, shedding their image as a boring, predictable person.
* What happened to make them feel the need to do this? - After years of being known as a dependable, responsible person, they got dumped by their fiance for (allegedly) being boring and unadventurous. They want to prove to everyone, and most importantly _themselves_, wrong by...volunteering for a mission to an alien planet.
* What is the character afraid of? - Getting sucked into a situation out of their control, where they feel unsafe, and being too weak to handle it.
* What is this character's true nature? (This can get revealed to you as the author, but not _necessarily_ to the character): The character thinks they want an exciting adventure, but really they want more of the same safe/controlled scenarios. They only volunteered to go because they were assured it'd be perfectly safe and temporary. They want an adventure with guardrails, and that continues to keep them in their shell: exactly the kind of person everyone thinks them to be.
* How does this character grow through the story? - by being forced out of the scope of what they THINK they want, into a REAL adventure, and having no choice but to face it and get out of their comfort zone to survive.
* What does the character learn? - That they can handle a real adventure, and can overcome greater challenges than they thought they were capable of.
Often as the above answers appear, so do potential plot points to exploit the character's desires, misconceptions, and the direction in which they're meant to be growing. If the character thinks they want a safe adventure, throw something that looks safe and predictable into their path and have them jump at the opportunity. Then have the adventure turn out to be not so safe after all, and now it's too late for them to turn back. How will they react when the first wrench is thrown into their plans? And who throws the wrench? And how do they react to the thrower: do they hate them, or do they grow to admire them and grow from their example? What does the thrower learn from _them_? (This is where you might start asking questions of the other character)
I think you get the idea. Basically, for me it's mostly about asking questions about the characters while staying within a framework of successful story structures in my chosen genre.
(1) What learning pathway would you recommend a total beginner in programming to follow in order to develop their own microstartups or side projects?
(2) How do you come up with an idea for a given microstartup? Is it an organic process, or is it more about thinking actively of potential business plans? Do you have any advice regarding idea generation?
Thanks for the advice. It really has motivated me. It's good to know that you do not need to know everything in a language to become competent, my perfectionist self often approaches learning in an all-or-nothing manner.
An aside question: For incoming med students interested in tech, would it be worthwhile to learn programming? I know it would be great for research. But as someone who is unsure about becoming a clinician scientist, it might be a waste of time to learn programming concurrently during med school.