PHI researchers featured in the Boston Globe

Northeastern team puts patients first in health tech

Article published on 5/6/2013.

PHI Speaker Series Presentation: Role of Patient-facing Technologies in the Era of Healthcare Reform

PHI Speaker Series Presentation

Role of Patient-facing Technologies in the Era of Healthcare Reform
David Ahern, Ph.D.
Director, Health Information Technology Resource Center (HITRC) For Aligning Forces for Quality of RWJF
Director, Program in Behavioral Informatics & eHealth
Department of Psychiatry
Brigham & Women’s Hospital

Abstract: I will describe a framework for organizing patient-facing technologies to enable meaningful use from the patients’ perspective. The major premise is that success of healthcare reform is predicated on creating technology-enabled, proactive care teams coupled with informed and activated patients who are more engaged in their own care. Two technology-enabled research projects in primary care will be presented as exemplars of this model.

Bio: Dr. Ahern is the Director of the Health Information Technology Resource Center (HITRC) based at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston for Aligning Forces for Quality, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation® providing 16 current active communities across the U.S. with technical assistance and guidance to leverage the near term value of health information technology to improve health care quality. In addition, Dr. Ahern is the Director of the Program in Behavioral Informatics and eHealth within the Department of Psychiatry at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. The Program in Behavioral Informatics and eHealth was created to advance research in at the intersection of behavioral science, technology, and the evaluation and treatment of mental health disorders. Dr. Ahern is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School. He received his doctorate from Nova Southeastern University and completed internship at the Brown University Internship Consortium. Dr. Ahern has had a distinguished career in clinical research in behavioral medicine and behavioral informatics and eHealth. He has published over 80 original articles in the areas of chronic pain, psychosocial aspects of musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular behavioral medicine, and eHealth research. He has held investigator roles on numerous research grants and contracts funded by multiple agencies including the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Ahern served a three year term on the Board of Scientific Counselors, National Center for Health Marketing, Federal Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Ahern also holds the position of Senior Scientist for Abacus Management Technologies based in Rhode Island.

For a list of upcoming speakers, see http://phi.neu.edu/seminar

Hosted by the Northeastern University Personal Health Informatics Program.

Personal Health Informatics Speaker Series Talk: From MIMIC to Sana: Learning systems, global eHealth, quality improvement and design thinking

Please join us for a talk in the Personal Health Informatics Speaker Series.

Thursday 4/4, 4-5PM, Room 104 West Village G (WVG)

Open to the public.

From MIMIC to Sana: Learning systems, global eHealth, quality improvement and design thinking
Leo Celi, MD, MPH, MS
MIT

Abstract: The failure to store and analyze the vast amount of data generated on a daily basis is a key hurdle in advancing the practice of medicine. An equally necessary and important goal involves creating a culture that reacts to and translates the findings of such “big data” into a better system of care. Together, these changes will close a feedback control loop that can help provide a more standardized, yet more personalized care. I will describe an interdisciplinary team-led, data-fueled, learning system that we have built around MIMIC, a public clinical database of patients admitted to the intensive care units at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. I will also discuss the evolution of Sana, a project hosted at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, from an mHealth solution to an organization that promotes capacity building and design thinking in the development of health information systems to improve the quality of care in resource-poor settings.

Bio: Bio: Dr. Leo Anthony Celi is an internist, an intensive care unit doctor, and an infectious disease specialist. After working in New Zealand for 5 years, Leo returned to Boston to pursue a master’s degree in biomedical informatics at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology and a master’s degree in public health at Harvard University, and a research post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His current research projects are in the field of artificial intelligence in medicine and strengthening health care systems in resource-constrained settings. He is now on staff at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ICU and the Laboratory of Computational Physiology at MIT.

For a list of upcoming speakers, see http://phi.neu.edu/seminar

Hosted by the Northeastern University Personal Health Informatics Program.