I am Brian MacArthur, an obstetrician who enjoys programming and general tinkering, and here’s a brief explanation of how this GitHub Pages site came to be.

I was raised in rural Oregon with 2 older brothers by a saint of a mother. We were poor then but loved. And though I haven’t experienced poverty in years, my experiences with it as a boy continue to leave a not entirely negative imprint on my life as a man.

In spite of my background, I was fortunate enough to attend Pomona College and even spend a semester at University College, Oxford. I earned a degree in linguistics and made some wonderful friends before returning to Oregon without a clear sense of how to proceed. It fortunately wasn’t long before I came across a fork in my road. I got a nasty external ear infection while working as a patina artist, and a rural family practitioner diagnosed and treated my infection. I became jealous of his knowledge. That event along with a couple other well timed encounters gave me the courage to take on my biggest challenge yet. I decided to become a physician.

I spent the following year and a half satisfying prerequisites and working as a biochemistry research assistant while preparing for the medical school application cycle. It was during that period that I came to appreciate the importance of embracing rather than resenting technology. I eventually took a break to expand my horizons, a journey that led me to a graphic design position at an e-learning startup. There I had opportunities to participate in many aspects of production and learned the value of project-based learning.

Then medical school happened. Residency was better.

Throughout my medical acculturation and training I was haunted by the fact that so many communication and learning problems lingered in medicine waiting for a technological solution. I was haunted because at the time I would have found it more stimulating to address those problems than to hack my way through them. Later, as EHRs became commonplace, a different issue arose. The technology I expected to be able to solve the many problems I had seen on my way up instead became a problem of its own due to shortsighted UI, framework, and interoperability considerations. Fortunately, health care IT is improving and will continue to catch up to the high standards set by the leaders in consumer and business IT. It will just take time.

In the meantime, where does one person with a very particular skill set fit into a realm that is dominated by corporate and public policy? That’s the question I intend to answer for myself in these pages.