Data Science and Medicine: Where’s the Sweet Spot? Opportunities, Challenges and Lessons Learned

APPLIED DATA SCIENCE SEMINAR

Monday, September 18^th, 4:15 PM

Yale Institute for Network Science, 17 Hillhouse Ave, 3rd Floor

“Data Science and Medicine: Where’s the Sweet Spot? Opportunities, Challenges and Lessons Learned”

Speaker: Harlan M Krumholz, MD, SM

Talk summary: Medicine seems last to the data science party. Despite the immense information needs within medicine and the recent digital transformation of medical data, health care remains far too anchored in a paper-based culture and too infrequently leverages the possibilities of data science. Yet, we are on the cusp of a transformative change in health care, one that will push the centrality of the patients’ needs, the importance of the individual over the average, the integrative understanding of biology, behavior, context and environment, the agency of people over their health and health care decision, and the systematic learning from daily of collective experience over the pre-eminence of individual expertise. And we are about to spread expertise instead of sequestering it. In this talk I will examine the possibilities ahead for the application of data science in medicine, with aspirations for a better future. 

Bio: Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and health care researcher at Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital. He received a BS from Yale, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a Masters in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard University School of Public Health. He is the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Director of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), one of the nation’s first and most productive research units dedicated to producing innovations to improve patient outcomes and promote better population health. He is also a Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, which prepares talented physicians to become future health care leaders.

Dr. Krumholz has been honored by membership in the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was named a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology and the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and was appointed by the U.S. government to the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. He is a 2014 recipient of the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China in recognition of his collaborative efforts to develop a national cardiovascular research network.

Dr. Krumholz is the editor of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, and editor of CardioExchange, a social media site of the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine. He has published more than 800 articles and is the author of two books, one on smoking cessation and another on reducing the risk of heart disease. He has a regular blog on Forbes.com and has contributed to the New York Times Wellness blog, the New York Times op-ed page, and National Public Radio Shots blog.