Healthcare IT is screwed up only because our healthcare SYSTEM is.
I recently left my job at UC Irvine, where I worked in telemedicine research and IT. I can only repeat what ahi and veb have already said, bureaucracy, specifically bureaucracy on all levels, departments, organizations, insurance companies, state and federal bodied, regulations, and fear, are the cause for stagnation. I've seen too many innovative solutions squashed because someone in management was convinced it wasn't "HIPAA-compliant".
If I had to choose one reason, however, it would be insurance companies. Why? Insurance companies choose what to reimburse, and they're not reimbursing for technology-based preventative and/or virtual care. My first response on HN was on this exact subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2256119
Scratch your own itch. Startups that solve your own problem are great ideas: you know the need exists and in turn you become passionate about a solution.
I may do the exact same thing! I've already started: my exit interview is this Thursday.
Statistically, the chances of PG accepting me into this latest YC class are slim to none, so I'll be spending quite a bit of time loading up on leisure and knowledge before making the final decision to bootstrap my startup: training in BJJ/MMA, surfing, and filling in some holes in my CS knowledge. I never received a formal functional programming education, so I'm powering through "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" on my nook, using Clojure instead of Scheme. I would like to learn more about message queues and NoSQL, maybe some Python like yourself, and clean up some projects I've recently open-sourced. And ruby-serialport, which I maintain, could use another release, perhaps a little website too. Heck, I could use a nicer website...
I have some travel plans as well. Staying with friends in the east coast, and visiting family in South America. Depending on what happens, I may travel more. As a Third Culture Kid, I miss the foreign and new very much. Coincidently, I'm exploring the wild idea of traveling and collaborating with other developers on OSS, a la Paul Erdos, except without the academic papers, or the amphetamines.
My only clearcut advice is not to forget about health insurance. The last thing we need is a broken arm to wipe out our savings.
Anecdotally, at what point this is true also seems to depend on the host OS. Windows 7's pmap was beneficial at a lower n than Mac OS X's for a simple O(n) function. I have always wondered why this is.
It's this "let's hack together" mentality that seems to be lacking in Southern California, where so many schools & companies still insist on cubicles. Time to take the train up to SF...
Likewise. I was fortunate to live and travel through South America and Southeast Asia through my teenage years since my father took overseas engineering jobs. I cannot begin to express what traveling, and more importantly, immersion, will do to your vision and your priorities. It's a wonderful world out there.
I used Evernote extensively for a few months. Their mobile apps did not support rich text, which frustrated me, but I found myself using the desktop clients exclusively.
Evernote may be excellent for certain workflows, but it just didn't jive with me. The concepts of documents, books, and tagging became a sort of work in itself.
What I really needed was a giant flexible outline: WorkFlowy. I recommend this simple but powerful mind tool without reservation.
It gets the job done! <center> is deprecated (or not supported at all) in HTML5 but I'm sure it'll be at least a decade before we have to worry about that.
I agree with all the above. I eventually figured out why people work at Starbucks. Be nomadic. I've been exploring the idea of "hacking field trips": taking a train somewhere (which itself I've heard works) and staying with a friend to spend the downtime with.
On a related note, when I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with ADD (no H) but was not told. Instead of medication, my parents took me to a behaviorist who insisted I always "get ready" for tasks that required focus. Even if it was the weekend and I was at home, I should take a shower, get dressed, and "splash on some cologne" before I even attempted to do my homework. He was real big on natural light too. In my case alertness and depression never seem to coincide.
You managed to read it all? I printed his dissertation out once and fell asleep at the beginning. If this happened to anyone else you can read a somewhat abridged version in his ACM paper: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/documents/2002-REST-TOIT.pdf
On another note, I remember reading his "musings" and getting the impression that he was mean and arrogant. I met him last year and he seemed like a nice guy. I was still careful to call my serial device HTTP resource server "RESTish" out of fear that I probably violated some principle somewhere.
Not sure how I feel about this, or the "We’re All Adults" rationalization. What about the mormon, or the recovering alcoholic? Drinking at work won't put them in danger, but it may make them slightly uncomfortable. I understand a special occasion, or even casual Friday, but anytime, all the time sounds like a bit much.
I'm inclined to say the same about Argentina and Uruguay, where I've traveled a few times, but not lived. I've also been to Brazil, and can tell you people of darker skin are quite the norm, as in the caribbean like Venezuela, though I wouldn't recommend going there for other reasons.
On another note: there is a ton of opportunity in web companies with a background in applied mathematics with all the data mining and social graphing and business statistics. Don't sell your degree short in this field. Do a little research into the major electives available to you and how they may apply to your own work.