Pathfinder Career Narratives is an ongoing series tracking the career choices and experiences of doctoral graduates. You can see all of the posts in the series here. You can find all the Pathfinder resources and opportunities here. Today’s blog is written by Dr Ian Thompson, Clinical Lead in Digital Health and Care, Directorate of Digital Health and Care, Scottish Government, and GP Partner, East Linton Surgery. You can find Dr Thompson on LinkedIn here, and at his website here.
Name: Dr Ian M. Thompson
Doctorate subject area and year of completion: PhD Artificial Neural Networks in Medicine: Theory and Application in Biomedical Systems (1998)
Role and employer: Clinical Lead in Digital Health and Care, Directorate of Digital Health and Care, Scottish Government and GP Partner, East Linton Surgery
Approximate salary bracket of this type of role: £96,000 – 128,000
Currently I have two roles; I am a part-time general practitioner in a semi-rural practice in East Lothian, and I work as the GP Clinical Lead for Digital Health and Care at the Scottish Government. The first role involves seeing patients in a general practice setting – often as a single-handed clinician. The second role focuses on bringing a clinical and digital health perspective to various aspects of the planning and provision of digital and population health for Scotland. This has included:
- supporting the international external (academic) panel in the production of their report (Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy: Report of the independent external expert panel) to complement the 2018 Digital Health and Care strategy in Scotland “Digital health and care strategy: enabling, connecting and empowering”
- acting as a subject matter expert on prescribing and user interface developments for NHS Scotland in their discussions with GPIT suppliers.
- helping to develop the search specifications used to identify shielded population during COVID19 from GP records.
- working with colleagues to support the identification of at-risk cohorts using GP records for various vaccination projects.
- working with technical and enterprise architecture colleagues to help envisage what the future of digital health might be delivered.
I started my career as a medical student at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1990, moving into the academic sphere with an intercalated BSc, I was given the opportunity to convert this into a PhD and graduated in 1998 as one of the first combined MBBS/PhD students. My PhD was entitled “Artificial Neural Networks in Medicine: Theory and Application in Biomedical Systems” . I would not have been able to complete this research path without funding from the Foulkes Foundation who support individuals with the aim of developing clinical academics.
At the time I graduated the pathway into clinical academic practice usually involved doing the academic work in personal spare time around the clinical job (the pathway is much better now with both foundation year and run through core training having the possibility to weave in a research strand). So, my initial path after my degree was defined by postgraduate medical training, which in the early 2000’s was not as rigid as it is presently. I completed house jobs at district general hospitals, before starting a senior house officer role in general medicine at North Tyneside General Hosptial. The working hours were long and I did not manage to undertake any research or academic work.
Then I moved into an organisational change role on a secondment to the Scottish Government to help with the Implementation Support Group for the Junior Doctors hours banded contract. The background to this role change was taking on the rota organisation role in my own unit in North East England and realising that I could do something to change this for a wider group of medical staff; also I was finding that the long hours of senior house officer training with the expectation I was to study for very complex postgraduate core medical training were not something that gave me enjoyment.
Having done this, I decided not to return to North East England, but to take up an eHealth role as the project doctor for the Electronic Clinical Communications Implementation (ECCI) in NHS Grampian 2001. Following 11 months in this role, I dual tracked full-time postgraduate training as a GP, and undertook a distance learning Masters in Healthcare Informatics with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the University of Bath. The latter of these took me nearly 10 years to complete, but mainly because I took an 18 month break from studies whilst I spent time being part of British Medical Association Juniors Doctor negotiating teams both at Scottish and UK levels, meeting with the Department(s) of Health. In addition to time on the Junior Doctors committee I also spent time as a GP registrar and GP Locum representative on the Scottish General Practitioners Committee and the Scottish Council of the BMA. This was a useful opportunity to build networking contacts and act as a representative on some of the eHealth committee in NHS Scotland. I completed clinical GP training in 2005 and undertook a series of locum posts before getting my current role as a GP partner in December 2009.
I eventually finished the master’s degree in 2010. I was then contacted by the head of the Primary Care Clinical Informatics Unit at Aberdeen University, Dr Bob Milne, who was at the time the Clinical lead for a group of Clinical Informatics GPs called Scottish Clinical Information management in Practice. I had initially met Bob when I worked in the ECCI role in NHS Grampian. I became a part-time clinical informatician working initially with NHS National Services Scotland acting as the Clinical lead for the Emergency Care Summary (ECS) from 2011 to 2020. In 2013 I was invited to join the eHealth Division at the Scottish Government, to support a colleague of mine Dr Libby MM Morris who had been instrumental in leading the initial implementation of the ECS.
In 2010 I attended the British Computer Society Health Informatics Scotland Conference and subsequently became Secretary for the group; acting as their secretary from 2011 to 2015 and assisting with organising their Health Informatics Scotland Conference until 2015. Between 2013 and 2017, I extended the role I had with SCIMP to act as Conference Chair for their annual GP IT Informatics Conferences working with colleagues from the SCIMP working group to run several successful conferences.
I have now spent around 10 years as a Clinical Lead with the Scottish Government (initially with the eHealth Division, and now with the larger Digital Health and Care Directorate) whilst maintaining a role as a practicing General Practitioner. It is interesting to look at the skills I have and use and how those gained during my academic studies have translated into those I use in my current roles. Time undertaking research in artificial neural networks extended pre-existing programming and computer networking skills, which gave me the technical background needed to understand modern digital technologies. I also learnt how to read academic papers and concisely summarise and reference them, which has helped me in producing reports in my Digital Health role. General Practice training taught me communication skills, in explaining medical concepts and situations to patients. I translated this ability to use it help me to explain sometimes technically difficult digital health concepts to varying audiences in a manner that makes them understandable.
Reflecting on my career path it has never been a regimentally planned route, but more a series of fortunate progressions that have brought me to a portfolio role that lets me combine the things that I enjoy. It is also clear to me that I have been lucky with the mentors and guides I have had along the way who have helped shape the skillset I developed. This leads me to say that it is important to consider the skills you respect in the leaders you find around you and quote Stephen Brown “You are not a leader until you have produced another leader who can produce another leader” which is something which I think I am still working towards myself.
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