20 HEALTHCARE CAREERS | 2018 | www.advanceweb.com TECHNOLOGY  |  HEALTHCARE CAREERS 2018 A quick glance at the Twitter feed for Manasi Agrawal, MD, gives some telling insight into the 33-year-old physician’s career. This coming June, Dr. Agrawal will be presenting during Digestive Diseases Week, reportedly the world’s largest gathering of phy- sicians, researchers, and industry in the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, endoscopy, and gastrointestinal surgery. Currently, the fel- low on staff in the gastroenterology depart- ment at Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, is proud to be involved in a partnership that her employer has forged with neighbor- hood convenience stores that are offering a wider variety of food choices to customers in an attempt to raise awareness of healthier dietary habits. Recent tweets from Dr. Agrawal also share results from a multicenter European study on the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, methodology related to balloon-assisted enteroscopy in patients living with Crohn’s dis- ease, and a study that examined trends in pre- scriptions of opiates and their association with all-cause mortality in individuals living with (IBD). And this is just a representation of what her feed reflects for the first week of April. A member of what is still a rare-breed cohort among healthcare professionals, Dr. Agrawal is a clinician who can say that social media predates her licensure. A 2009 medical school graduate, she will never know a career absent of a level of connectivity that allows cli- nicians, their peers and their patients to com- municate globally. Then there are the likes of Frank Aviles, whose career began nearly 20 years prior to Agrawal’s. He is not currently on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean that advanced tech- nology hasn’t brought Aviles and fellow elder statesmen to the same point as Agrawal and younger professionals—a place where technol- ogy is impacting healthcare providers and the patients that they see every day. From electronic health records (EHRs) and access to digital research files, to high-defini- tion medical devices and online learning tools, technology has changed the ways in which clinicians learn, practice and communicate, regardless of age and experience. Recently, Dr. Agrawal and Aviles spoke with ADVANCE to share their individual perspectives as to how technology has guided their careers, their continued education, and their relationships with their peers and patients, discussing the pros and cons that advances to said technol- ogy have played and how they see future trends developing. CONSTANT COMMUNICATION From a basic communications standpoint, technology has taken networking and learning to another level. For those among the millen- nial generation, these changes began as early as their medical school days. “For physicians newly entering the field, technology is a part of their education and evo- lution,” Dr. Agrawal said. “They have grown with it, they learn from it and constantly think outside the box and conceive innovative appli- cations of technology.” There has been a rapid shift toward web- based learning, including multimedia that offers the ability to sit in on conferences and lectures from one’s desktop or digital device. For those of a certain age, this has been the norm for some time and will continue to be so as younger age groups join the workforce. Modern workforces are more dependent on the use of technology than ever, not just to communicate across the continuum but to have easier access to patients, said Aviles, who serves as wound care service line direc- tor at Natchitoches (LA) Regional Medical Center. In some ways, the younger generation TECHNOLOGY’S IMPACT ON COMMUNICATION, CAREERS AND PATIENT CARE How technology is taking healthcare networking, communication and learning to a new level. by Joe Darrah ISTOCK