Graduate Health Degrees Expand Knowledge, Career Options

Daniel Putnam always wanted to be a scientist. And watching his mother struggle with mental illness and the debilitating side effects of her medications before she died helped decide his course.

That experience, coupled with his growing fascination with computers, left Putnam with "a strong desire to find a career where I could combine computer science with biology, chemistry and mathematics to improve medicine."

So Putnam earned his bachelor's in bioengineering at the University of Utah in 2007. While working at a genomics company, he grew interested in biomedical informatics, a young field where computer science and medicine meet. The goal is to collect and analyze health-related data that can be used to improve health care, says Doug Fridsma, president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association.

These pros might use data from electronic health records to help clinicians and policymakers develop strategies to reduce diabetes in a community, say. Or they might develop software to offer real-time support to doctors hoping to avoid dangerous drug interactions in their patients or model what is occurring within the body at the genetic level to advance cancer research.

Putnam was drawn to the latter path. After earning his doctorate in biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University in 2016, Putnam joined St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he works with doctors and other scientists involved in the hospital's cutting-edge genomic research.

The team sequences hundreds of patients' genomes to search for the mutations underlying their diseases and, eventually, targeted treatments. Putnam focuses on developing algorithms and advanced software tools to identify chromosomal variations that increase a person's likelihood to develop cancer.

"We want to identify why these variations are occurring, what the patterns are and in which cancer types. We can then more effectively diagnose and treat them," says Putnam. Already, the team has helped find critical mutations driving the growth of rare brain cancers.

Pharmaceutical and insurance companies, hospitals, health centers and tech startups are helping create demand for biomedical informatics professionals, notes Fridsma, who says starting salaries can run from $90,000 to $110,000 and exceed $300,000 for those in leadership roles.

There are other health care paths for students interested in graduate school.

• Nurse anesthetist: Nurse anesthetists provide pain management and anesthesia before, during and after surgery. They work in operating and emergency rooms, military settings and private clinics, often in place of doctors specializing in anesthesiology.

Today the job requires a Master of Science in nurse anesthesia. Beginning in 2025, certified registered nurse anesthetists must earn a Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice. More than 2,400 new CRNAs enter the workforce annually. Median salary runs about $157,000.

• Speech-language pathologist: Patients who have difficulty speaking or swallowing due to conditions such as stroke, brain injury and autism head to speech-language pathologists for help. These experts generally work in health care facilities, private clinics and schools.

The government estimates that almost 30,000 jobs will come on line during the decade ending in 2024 to serve aging baby boomers and children benefiting from increased early identification of language difficulties. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association notes the median annual salary is $75,000.

• Pediatrician: A shortage of primary care doctors should help spur growth in demand for pediatricians to the tune of some 3,600 new positions by 2024, especially as diagnosis of special needs in children increases. In 2015, median annual salary was $170,300.

This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2018" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.