[PyHealthcare] Introduction

[Nick Lo]

Hello all, My name is Nick Lo and having read the other introductions
I feel like I'm very underqualified to be part of this group. It was
Frederico Caboni's presentation on the use of Python in Healthcare at
Europython 2011 that brought the group to my attention. While watching
that presentation I realised that not only did I find it one of the
most interesting presentations of the many I watched, but also that it
was one of the more relevant ones to the work that I am now involved
in.

For the past 4.5 years one of my main clients has been the Institute
for Health and Social Science Research at CQUniversity, Australia
where I've been working on various web application projects dealing
with, for example, outpatient rehabilitation for diabetes,
cardiovascular disease. Oddly it was watching Frederico's presentation
that made me realise how familiar I have become with healthcare, not
only through client work but through personal interest.

As for my being underqualified I think a lot is due to my own history
coming via design rather than the sciences. I've been working since
2000 in web-development using PHP and in that time co-authored "Zend
Framework in Action". I started using Django and Python to speed up
development of the Uni projects and now see Python as my "go to"
language while still maintaining a few PHP based projects out of
necessity.

My interest in this group is hopefully to get a sense of what I do and
don't know about the healthcare IT industry and what directions I
could take the work we do in.