黑料门resident uses data to develop surgeon-scientist career
In two years, Dr. Sujay Kulshrestha, a general surgery resident at 黑料门University Health System (LUHS), changed the direction of his career.
How?
He pursued a Master of Science in Health Informatics at 黑料门University Chicago鈥檚 Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health and worked in its Informatics Lab.
Dr. Kulshrestha learned about the program from Dr. Majid Afshar, a mentor and physician scientist who worked at LUHS and taught at Loyola's Stritch School of Medicine and the Parkinson School.
Two years in the Informatics Lab exposed Dr. Kulshrestha to the possibilities of analytic tools. His research involved using multimodal data from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to automate the process of creating clinical registries. Ultimately, these efforts could improve patient care by easing the collection of clinical data for researchers. The tool he eventually developed gathered all of the charting data to automatically determine the severity of injury for trauma patients, easing the time-intensive process of reviewing every patient鈥檚 chart that occurs across the country at trauma centers today. Using techniques in informatics, they can use the entire body of data as a basis for conducting research.
鈥淚nformatics can unlock data and make it more accessible,鈥� says Dr. Kulshrestha. 鈥淚t converts data into information.鈥�
Working in the Informatics Lab is quite a change from working in a fast-paced clinical setting. But it underscores and reinforces a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care: some practitioners have an Informatics perspective and some bring their clinical experience to solving problems or conducting research.
鈥淭ransitioning into the lab felt like I was getting off a moving sidewalk,鈥� says Dr. Kulshrestha. 鈥淵ou need to stop; learn the language, how best to approach the work, write code, and persevere,鈥� he says.
Equipped with the experience of a National Institute of Health post doc in data science, along with his master鈥檚 and his Informatics lab work, Dr. Kulshrestha plans to pursue a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery and maintain research as an important component of his surgeon-scientist career. But first, he will return to complete the remaining three years of surgical training while 鈥渒eeping a hand in鈥� informatics as another avenue to improving patient care.