Former Google software engineer Hugh Gordon knew he always wanted to be a physician, but said he "fell" into software engineering because he was good at it. However, the desire to help people on a clinical level was never far from his mind, according to USC News.
After a few years of working at the tech behemoth, Mr. Gordon said he realized he "still had … the desire to become a doctor" and began taking pre-med classes at the Los Angeles-based Keck School of Medicine at USC.
He said what attracted him to Keck was the opportunity to work at the school's 600-bed public teaching hospital LAC+USC Medical Center and its Health, Technology and Engineering program, which combines the disciplines of medicine and engineering.
Mr. Gordon told the publication he was in the first cohort for the HTE program, which pairs medical students and engineering students and requires them to do a four-year project to innovate some aspect of the healthcare industry. He said he and his partner embarked on a project that would allow providers to text patients.
"To an engineer like me, [the project] seemed like an afternoon's easy work. But the real work turned out to be in getting those few lines of code accepted for use in a hospital environment. We had to fit our software into existing healthcare technology systems and clinical workflows, ensure technology and company policies complied with complex regulations related to protecting patient data, and meet federal, state and organizational rules at every step," Mr. Gordon said.
"As programmers, we often roll our eyes when we think we’ve run into bureaucracy, but … I quickly found that these rules, policies, procedures and regulations are there for good reasons. These computer systems aren't for sharing cat photos, they're for keeping people alive. You don't just tinker with them," he added.
Mr. Gordon, who is scheduled to begin his residency in internal medicine later this year, noted he thoroughly enjoyed his time at Google. However, he knew he would be able to have a different kind of impact on people as a physician.
"The chance to improve people's lives more is why I gave up my cushy Google gig to be a doctor. Google was great, but now I get the best of both worlds," he said.
To access the report, click here.