Healthcare Headaches: Addressing Information Silos in Primary Care

Informatics in the Round

It’s no secret that handling medical data is complicated and time-consuming. Of course, the goal is to address the patient buried beneath the in-depth patient notes, multiple EHRs, and drug prescriptions. Perhaps technology can make that a bit easier! In this episode, we have the special privilege of hearing the research of two graduate students who have found the biggest pain points in our primary healthcare system and have brainstormed ways that technology, especially emerging AI, can help address these issues. Every listener will find a way to relate to the stories shared in this episode, and we hope our discussion about the short-term and long-term goals for the application of AI in medicine makes you optimistic about the future of primary healthcare!

Trevor Martinez is a current master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing an MSE in bioengineering. He is primarily interested in the fields of biomedical data science, healthcare, and medical devices. Pavan Patel is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a dual MBA/MA from the Wharton School and the Lauder Institute, and he is also a computer science student at Penn Engineering. Previously, he worked in healthcare at Hazel Health and in private credit and equity at Bain Capital and CI Capital. It was great to hear what these young minds came up with, and they graciously shared some of the visuals they created to explain information silos. If you want to view the visuals along with the podcast, make sure to watch via our YouTube channel!

We also had Dr. Ross Koppel hop on this episode. Dr. Koppel is a professor of sociology and medical informatics at the University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Center for Public Health Initiative, and a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Institute for Biomedical Informatics. His hundreds of articles focus on the cybersecurity, usability, and ethics of healthcare information technology and has greatly impacted the field’s understanding of how we can improve human-computer interactions and better integrate HIT into hospital workflow. He was the perfect person to chime in on Trevor and Pavan’s research!

Finally, we had the great pleasure of welcoming a new co-host to our podcast! Dr. Stacy Iannone is the project manager for Dr. Johnson’s lab, which researches computationally-enhanced healthcare. She brings with her an extensive background in clinical research. We were so excited to have her share her insights and experiences on this episode!

We really enjoyed discussing these students’ insightful research and debating how we see AI entering the conversation. We hope you enjoy listening!

Mentioned in this episode:

-”5 Tactics to Break Down Silos and Support Cross-Functional Collaboration” by Rhonda Stewart

Check out Rhett McDaniel's newest album Rhett McDaniel's Contribution to the Noise Floor

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