An extraordinary opportunity to apply your keen, superhuman abilities in systems architecture to improve patient health.
Are you up for the challenge?
Here’s the Deal
Most Americans work, and most Americans spend the majority of their waking hours at work. Inevitably, we bring our health to work and our health is also affected by the work that we do. For example, did you know that shift work can make it more difficult to manage diabetes? Or that remaining seated for too long is being linked to an increased risk of certain types of cancers in women? Did you know that public health folks figure out these connections by looking at data from very large numbers of people? But it’s hard to do right now. We do not yet take advantage of technology to integrate our understanding of work — this key social determinant of health — into patient care.
Currently, when we visit the doctor, there is no standardized way that health care providers ask and capture information about our occupation. If collected, that information is not likely to be included in an electronic health record for future use and consideration, or is inconsistently buried in the doctor’s notes from that visit. Consequently, it can’t be used by doctors to help provide personalized care recommendations or readily shared with public health experts to identify these kinds of critical new connections between occupation and health. Harnessing the power of technology to collect and use work information throughout healthcare and public health represents a new frontier with the potential to improve the health of more than half of the adults in the U.S.!
Imagine a world where clinicians and the patients understand the relevant connections for the individual so that more people are safer and healthier no matter what they do and in what type of business they work. That’s where you come in.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is charged with a mission to, “develop new knowledge in the field of occupational safety and health and to transfer that knowledge into practice.” NIOSH is looking to address these complementary critical challenges by bringing on a creative, fearless systems architect to create a blueprint for getting information to NIOSH and puting knowledge about work and health into practice. CDC is recruiting an Entrepreneur in Residence to design and plan the architecture with new approaches to collecting, using, and sharing occupational information in electronic health information systems and to solve the puzzle of collecting occupational information.
The NIOSH team has done some initial discovery and testing to collect key work information with stellar results. But they are looking for an Entrepreneur-in-Residence to take this quick win to the next level! And this innovator would also set the technical vision —moving data and knowledge between people, healthcare, organizations, public health around the country (beginning with the NIOSH-funded states), and NIOSH.
The HHS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) program recruits gamechangers like you to work on mission-critical projects for 13 months. With support from the highest levels of HHS leadership and freedom to incorporate new approaches, EIRs partner with internal teams to deliver solutions.