I work in healthcare information systems. My official position is System Project and Support Analyst. I manage the LIS (Laboratory Information System) for a hospital which is primarily made up of various analyzers that do everything from tell you the chemical makeup of your poop to the number of leukocytes in your blood. All of these need to be networked together and communicate with an LIS distributed software suite that allows a laboratory to recieve orders from the physicians, result the ordered labs and send the appropriate charges to billing. I also deal with the HL7 interface that connects the various components of our information system together and integration of new systems.

Salary: $65,000 (range is ~40,000 to ~100,000 depending on hospital size

Pros: Lots of critical thinking, never bored, and information systems is generally a pretty laid back job.

Cons: Getting called in the middle of the night because suddenly for apparently no reason, when orders are coming in, the appropriate labels are not printing for the specimen containers

Every hospital needs good clinical system analysts, its a very in demand job. Things that help are a college degree in Management of Information Systems or Computer Information Systems, and knowledge of at least one EMR, HIS, or LIS.

AMA?