Cole’s Presentation Wins Award
November 7, 2024
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Amy Cole presenting at Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making[/caption]
Congratulations to CHIP Doctoral Student, Amy Cole, who won the Anne Stiggelbout Award for outstanding presentation in patient and stakeholder preferences and engagement at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making. Amy’s dissertation research is working to develop a values-clarification tool for adults with advanced cancers. Her work focuses on the communication between clinical providers and their patients and understanding how tailoring patient reported health information can impact patient-centered care. When there is a patient-clinician disagreement this could indicate a need for providers to better understand patient values and what is of most value to their patient. Amy is developing decision support tools to help answer this question and estimate the quality of values that are clarified based on the tool used. She is engaging patients, families, and clinicians in this process. Amy is passionate about patient-centered care that results in better patient-centered outcomes.
Students Value Diverse Internship Experiences
November 4, 2024
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Vidheesha Patel[/caption]
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Sai Tejaswini Velpuri[/caption]
CHIP master's student Vidheesha Patel and alums Sai Tejaswini Velpuri, and Anuradha Bankar all completed their internships this past summer. Their experiences varied, but all concluded that the internship was an extremely valuable component to their master's education.
This past summer, CHIP master's student Vidheesha Patel interned as a Clinical Informatics Analyst at Conifer Health Solutions, affiliated with Tenet Healthcare Corporation. This role gave her the opportunity to apply her academic knowledge to real-world challenges, specifically within revenue cycle management in hospitals and population health. As a part of the Value-Based Care Team, she engaged with claims data analysis, participated in team discussions, and helped problem solve complex challenges. Her individual project centered on analyzing pregnancy claims data without terminating events to understand misclassification of these claims and missing information. Her project analysis suggested that missing procedure and diagnosis codes are often the cause for misclassification or missing component. She commented that, "This experience not only sharpened my analytical skills but also gave me valuable insights into how I can contribute effectively to the field in future roles.”
Dr. Sai Tejaswini Velpuri, is a recent graduate of the Biomedical and Health Informatics program. She began her journey in the clinical field, spending around 4 years researching salivary gland tumors during her undergraduate studies. While working in a clinical setting, she realized the critical role data plays in healthcare, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which inspired her to transition into healthcare data analytics. Since then, she has pursued a data-driven path through various courses and roles at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UNC School of Nursing, where she specialized in analyzing clinical data. Recently, Sai completed an internship as a Data Visualization Specialist at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She said, "during my internship, I focused on visualizing pharmacy operational hours across states using Tableau and ArcGIS Pro Online, while also analyzing the healthcare services provided by pharmacies in different regions. This role taught me how to create impactful data visualizations and gave me valuable insights into applying data in real-world healthcare settings. It was a great opportunity to collaborate with experts and work on projects aligned with my passion for healthcare data science."
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Anuradha Bankar[/caption]
Anuradha Bankar is another recent graduate of the MPS BMHI program. She found her perfect internship opportunity at Asklepios Biopharmaceutical Inc. (AskBio). During her internship, she was able to apply the analytical techniques she learned in the MBA 893 class, particularly using SAS JMP, to enhance experimental workflows. Additionally, her familiarity with data visualization tools like Tableau proved invaluable as she navigated through complex data analysis using GraphPad. "This experience deepened my proficiency in extracting actionable insights from experimental data, equipping me with a comprehensive skill set that bridges practical lab work with advanced data analysis. This hands on internship experience was the most rewarding aspect of the CHIP program!"
CHIP PhD Student Wins Titan Award
November 4, 2024
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Natthawut 'Max' Adulyanukosol (center) receives his Titan Award from OHDSI leaders[/caption]
CHIP PhD student, Natthawut 'Max' Adulyanukosol, was recently awarded the Titan Award for Community Collaboration by Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI). OHDSI is an interdisciplinary collaborative to highlight the value of health data through large-scale analytics. OHDSI has an international network of researchers and health databases centrally housed at Columbia University.
To recognize OHDSI collaborators (or collaborating institutions) for their contributions towards OHDSI’s mission, the OHDSI Titan Awards were introduced introduced at the 2018 Symposium. The Titan awards are the highest of OHDSI community's honors for collaborators who are making contributions in advancing open data standards, methods research, open-source development and clinical evidence generation.
The community collaboration award recognizes an individual for their collaborative spirit in helping their fellow community members reach their goals. Max has been working with Thai colleagues to promote OHDSI and the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) in Thailand through workshops and guidance. In addition, his team at Siriraj Hospital in Thailand has been developing the official OHDSI Thailand chapter, and working to involve additional Thai healthcare institutions with the OHDSI community. The goal is to contribute even more to the global OHDSI community in the years to come.
Congratulations to Max for this tremendous honor and collaborative community effort!
Meet CHIP Alum Nessim Abu Saif
October 9, 2024
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CHIP Alum Nessim Abu Saif, MD, MPH, MPS[/caption]
Meet CHIP alum, Nessim Abu Saif! After completing his MD at Trinity School of Medicine, Nessim pursued research that led to his interest in health informatics. Currently holding a role as a clinical process consultant at Duke Heart Center, he uses his health informatics training to work with clinical systems and collaborate with clinical providers and IT. Read more about Nessim below.
Tell us about yourself and what led you to pursue the MPS BMHI program with CHIP?
In 2004, I moved to the United States from Egypt with the goal of pursuing a career in medicine. I completed a Bachelor of Biological Sciences (BS) and a Master of Public Health (MPH) at the University of Missouri-Columbia, specializing in epidemiology, health policy, and disease prevention. After leaving Missouri in 2010, I lived in the West Indies, Georgia, Ohio, and Louisiana as I worked towards my Doctor of Medicine (MD) at the Trinity School of Medicine.
Upon graduating from medical school, I spent several months conducting research at UT Southwestern. During this time, I used biostatistical methods to determine parental-offspring risk factors for early-onset cardiovascular disease. This experience sparked my interest in using clinical and population health data to address gaps in quality, access, and patient outcomes, leading me to pursue a career in health informatics.
As I explored opportunities in this emerging field, I sought programs with distinguished faculty, connections to industry leaders, and access to leading research, biotech, and healthcare institutions. UNC-CHIP checked every box. For instance, CHIP's close affiliation with NC TraCS provided an internship experience that offered in-depth exposure to clinical data models (PCORnet, FHIR, UNC-CDW), mapping elements, and maintaining data integrity as a result of the interoperability gap.
What have you been up to since graduation?
I spent time with my family before moving to Boston for a position as a Senior Quality Analyst at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). In this role, I focused on conducting process improvement assessments and utilized data visualization tools such as Tableau and Power BI to analyze clinical data extracted using SQL. Additionally, I reviewed provider policies, procedures, and documentation standards to identify areas for improvement.
Currently, I hold the position of Clinical Process Consultant at Duke Heart Center of Excellence. In this multifaceted role, I am responsible for mastering clinical system technology platforms including Lumedx and Epic EMR. I translate process change needs into developer requirements and collaborate daily with clinical and IT staff.
What do you find most rewarding about your work?
Constant new challenges and opportunities for growth. Both roles demanded a broad set of skills that required learning new applications and systems.
Who inspires you?
Elias and Nessim, my grandfathers, both conquered adversity at a young age to provide for their families and achieve the pinnacle of their careers. Their resilience truly exemplifies the mindset of being the ultimate adversary.
What do you like to do when you are not at work?
I enjoy spending quality time with family, playing soccer, watching the Italian league, racket sports, and hiking/biking. I enjoy traveling to the beach or a historical site when on vacation.
What advice would you give to current CHIP students?
After months of coursework, I gained a deep appreciation for the vastness of the informatics field. It's essential to choose your informatics role early. Analyze job descriptions to pinpoint responsibilities and required skills, and adapt your coursework accordingly. Networking is crucial for uncovering opportunities and identifying areas where your expertise is needed - another advantage offered by CHIP.
De Sousa’s Internship Leads to Job Offer
October 9, 2024
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CHIP Master's Student Marina De Sousa[/caption]
Marina De Sousa is a CHIP master's student who recently finished up her internship with Patients & Purpose, a healthcare advertising company based out of New York. Her unique project management internship experience exposed her to a new way to use her health informatics training to support patients. Healthcare data, such as insurance claims, was used to guide communication and marketing strategy and an analytics dashboard was used to monitor performance of communication campaigns and ways to improve efforts and increase population reach. Read more about Mariana's experience below.
What was your internship like? What did you do day to day?
I was a project management intern for a healthcare advertising/communications agency. As an intern, I worked closely with project managers to develop timelines and budgets for each deliverable. I was on the Pfizer team, so our clients would come to us with different deliverables to communicate important information about non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, and colorectal cancer to patients and healthcare providers. The marketing materials we created were designed to empower patients by providing them with valuable information, resources, and support to better manage their health conditions and advocate for their well-being. These materials include doctor discussion guides, brochures, videos, and more.
I also worked closely with the account team to utilize technology and healthcare data to improve care delivery and patient outcomes. The account team creates a project brief (requested by the client) that addresses a specific healthcare challenge or communicates specific healthcare information. The projects move throughout the account, project management, and creative teams to come to life as seen fit by the client. Once marketing materials were deployed to patients and healthcare providers, the analytics dashboard was used to monitor the performance and determine how to improve campaign efforts and population reach. Tracking metrics such as clicks, visits, engagement rates, and conversions to measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts helped make data-driven optimizations as needed.
What did you learn from your work?
Through my internship, I gained an understanding of pharmaceutical marketing processes and regulations as there are many legal constraints associated with marketing pharmaceutical products and messages to patients and healthcare providers. I also strengthened my project management skills, learned about different approaches to developing patient-focused materials, and furthered my health informatics knowledge looking at patient data and the reach that our materials had.
What was the most challenging aspect of your internship? What was most rewarding?
The most challenging part of my internship was picking up in the middle of some projects. A normal project takes months to develop on average, so there were a lot of projects that I was working on that were in the middle or end stages. When a project kicks off, we are able to have the purpose/background of the project, who it’s aimed for, and see the whole life cycle of it.
It has been very rewarding to not only see a project through from start to finish, but also seeing it be deployed and used by patients. As we are a patient-focused company, the information we provide to them is invaluable as we help empower them to advocate for themselves and their cancer journey.
How did the internship contribute to your professional growth?
This internship contributed to my professional growth in a way that opened my eyes to a career field I had no idea existed. I am so grateful to be part of a company that constantly works to have a meaningful impact on patients' lives by providing them with the resources and support they need to lead healthier and more fulfilling lives. I’m excited to grow in this career field and see where it leads!
What advice you would give to students seeking an internship or getting ready to start one?
One piece of advice I would give to students seeking an internship or getting ready to start one is to be open to learning and growing. As someone who didn’t know what I wanted to do career-wise, I was able to go into the process with an open mind and accept any opportunity with open arms. Throughout the summer, I was always asking questions, asking to sit in on meetings to learn more, and having meetings with executives to connect and hear about their experience at the company. As I found myself toward the end of my internship, I realized that my mindset got me to where I was, and I was so thankful to get a full time offer to return!