You are: The Design Strategist

You don’t need a technical degree to break into this field, just the right focus and foundational skills. Begin by:

• Leaning into your strengths and translational experiences: Ever carried a leadership position in any other industry? Ever created and/or led a new workflow, process, or project from beginning to end? Carry the confidence that your project planning and project execution skills are valuable!

• Exploring entry-level certifications such PMP or other related project management certifications. This may be most valuable as an implementation lead, as there are aspects of project management involved. It will also be beneficial to cover other topics such as the CompTIA IT Fundamentals+, CAHIMS (from HIMSS), or Google’s free Data Analytics Certificate.

• Learning how EHR systems work through YouTube tutorials or free demo environments (if available to you). Consider starting with general healthcare workflow courses to build context.

• Consider working up through a clinical operations capacity and find your way to IT. I personally know successful professionals that have worked their way up from front desk registration, up a few steps, transitioned to IT, and today they are excelling in an Administrative Director of an EHR Application role!

  • Alternatively a Help Desk entry-level role makes a great first step into the Healthcare IT space. This will allow you to experience first-hand challenges that healthcare staff may face on a daily basis.

Essential Resources:

• The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter - This book focuses on the importance of the first 90 days of a new role. Missteps in that timeframe can jeopardize or even derail your success.

  • Hardcover version

  • Kindle Version

• The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age. - This book is a compilation of compelling stories and hard-hitting analyses of physicians that provide insight into the challenges of technology in the healthcare sector. (links below)

  • Paperback version

  • Kindle version

Your clinical experience is a powerful asset. Here’s how to build on it and pivot into a technical role:

• Lean into your strengths and translational experiences. Stand out to your IT/informatics department by suggesting optimizations to workflows, or volunteer to be a subject matter expert or “super user.” If you believe your leader will be supportive, share your interest in this next phase of your career. Disclaimer, not all leaders are created equal so sharing such information will not always yield the same result for everyone, but it can make an impactful difference!

• Target roles that bridge clinical and IT skills, like Clinical Informaticist, Epic Trainer, or Clinical Analyst, or in your case Project Management. These positions highly value your hands-on care experience.

• Volunteer to help with build as a clinician builder. Some organizations have adopted this practice and the trend is growing. Keep your clinician duties while building entry-level changes in your EHR such as Note Templates, Order Sets, and more. This will make you visible to your organization’s IT team and potentially get you some EHR-specific training sponsored and paid for.

• Consider specialized training in systems like Epic (through an employer or consulting firm), or certifications in Health Informatics (e.g., AMIA 10x10, or CAHIMS).

• Document your process improvement contributions from the bedside — such as helping optimize documentation workflows, reducing charting time, or using clinical technology effectively. Keep a log of hours spent on the projects you’ve led, as well as stats on the impact of the project.

• Leverage mentorship or job shadowing with your organization’s IT or informatics department to understand real-world applications.

Essential Resources:

Success isn’t only about understanding technology, it’s about improving systems. These two books introduce you to the foundational thinking behind workflow optimization, process improvement, and reducing inefficiencies.

• Unlocking Lean Six Sigma

  • Paperback Version

  • Kindle Version

• The Toyota Way

  • Hardcover Version

  • Kindle Version

Recommendation to all clinicians:

• The Influential Mind - strategies and lessons on how to clearly communicate vision and align multiple disciplines; something you will likely need to get familiar with.

  • Paperback Version

  • Kindle Version

Already in the field and ready to level up? Focus your next steps on deepening your expertise and broadening your impact:

• Master a specialty area such as FHIR/API integration, population health analytics, or automation through RPA tools like UiPath.

• Earn advanced certifications like CPHIMS, PMP, or specialized vendor credentials (e.g., Epic Cogito, Willow, or Beaker).

• Build your portfolio with projects that demonstrate measurable impact: from optimizing a system to reducing user errors or increasing reporting efficiency. Stats, percentages, and impact make a compelling story that can pave the way to your career growth.

• Get involved in strategic initiatives within your organization or volunteer for pilot programs to showcase leadership potential or “architect” potential.

• Explore other tracks or roles. Leadership is almost always the “next logical step” once you’re at a senior analyst or administrator level, and given your strengths, it may likely be your next logical step as well. Team leads, managers, and other leadership roles in the space will still require “Build” in one capacity or another, but from a strategic lens, you’ll be assembling the larger building blocks of processes and technologies instead of individual reports and UI screens.

Essential Resources:

Advanced Health Technology - helps you recognize and drive the “quadruple aim” of improved patient experience, better patient and business outcomes, improved clinician experience, and lower healthcare costs:

• Paperback Version

• Kindle Version

Principles of Health Interoperability - Diving deeper into technical build, you have a book that will help you learn more about some of the integrations and interoperability standards needed to bring healthcare systems up to the modern age of technology:

• Paperback Version

• Kindle Version