Commentary

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Senior Writer, InformationWeek  

The H-1B Visas That Could Save Lives

Regardless of whether you think the cap on H-1B visas should be raised or not, there are some very specific -- and scarce -- types of talent and brainpower that could help save lives but are possibly being shut out of coming into the United States.

Regardless of whether you think the cap on H-1B visas should be raised or not, there are some very specific -- and scarce -- types of talent and brainpower that could help save lives but are possibly being shut out of coming into the United States.Among the promising IT-fueled advancements being made in medicine are those related to the analysis of genetic and other complex clinical data.

For instance, recognizing patterns among patients with certain chronic illnesses -- and specific genetic markings -- who are responding well or poorly to a treatment can require the mining and analysis of tons of clinical data, genomic info, and other records.


More Global CIO Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

But those sorts of complicated discoveries -- including identifying patients who are in danger of having strokes but exhibit none of the more obvious risk factors, like having high blood pressure -- require a combination of scientific, medical, and technology skills that are hard to find, says John Glaser, CIO at Partners HealthCare, which operates several prestigious Boston-area hospitals, including Mass General and Brigham & Women's.

Research projects like those are under way at Partners HealthCare, and the correlations and discoveries they yield could one day help improve medical outcomes and even save lives. Yet, finding that very specific, and rare combination of tech-savvy and medical know-how isn't easy, Glaser says, even for an organization like Partners, headquartered within miles of Harvard, MIT, and dozens of other well-respected medical research facilities.

These sorts of discoveries require "very specific genetic and IT talent" that's very difficult to find not only in Boston, but anywhere in the United States, he says. To Glaser, that's a strong argument for "relaxing the cap on H-1B visas," he says. Those types of promising medical IT-projects require the very best minds available, regardless of where they come from, he says.

What do you think?


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links