A shared passion for technology and medicine
Treating COVID-19 patients in an intensive care unit in a New York City hospital at the height of the pandemic. Researching HIV/AIDS and migraines as a PhD graduate student to better understand neuroinflammation. Starting an MCAT prep company while in medical school to improve the online education experience for pre-med students. Creating a volunteer program and database to help patients connect to social services to address health equity. Co-authoring industry standards to improve healthcare interoperability. Writing a script to cut the time it takes doctors to document their notes by an hour each week.
What do these experiences have in common? They are all from doctors who have found their way to Truveta and share a passion for the intersection of medicine and technology, where they can use their expertise and experience to advance Truveta’s visions of saving lives with data.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll share more about each Truvetan MD, the path that brought them to Truveta, and how their work will help enable researchers to find cures faster, empower every fellow clinician to be an expert and help families make the most informed decisions about their care. Until then, a brief introduction…
Ryan Ahern, MD, MPH
Ryan is the Chief Medical Officer for Truveta, and his background brings together a unique blend of data strategy and medicine as a practicing physician. He channels his passion for both medicine and data into his work at Truveta, where he leads engagement with health systems and life sciences companies to help them to imagine what the Truveta Platform can do to empower their clinical research to improve health equity and advance the safety and effectiveness of medications.
- By the CV: Ryan had a formative experience after receiving his undergraduate degree working as a part of a public health program to coordinate care for HIV and tuberculosis (TB) at the center of the drug-resistant TB epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He then went on to medical school at the University of Washington and received his Master of Public Health in health economics at Harvard. Following a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), he followed his passion for data insights to McKinsey and Clarify Health. All the while, his love of medicine also saw him serving as an attending physician at MGH and then Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, where he served on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic surge in early 2020. He currently works as a Clinical Assistant Professor and Attending Physician at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
- What might surprise you: During medical school, Ryan joined his love of data and medicine while working at the Gates-funded think tank called the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) to quantify the Global Burden of Disease. He was one of the early members of the IHME team, working directly with the Institute Director Chris Murray, MD, DPhil.
- Why Truveta: The idea that a group of leading health systems were going to join forces to build a learning community powered by their collective data and a shared vision to save lives with data seemed almost too good to be true – he had to be a part of it and was one of Truveta’s first employees.
Nick Stucky, MD, PhD
Nick is the Vice President of Research at Truveta and a practicing infectious diseases physician and researcher at Providence Portland Medical Center.
- By the CV: Nick is a graduate of the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he received both his Doctor of Medicine (MD) and PhD in pharmacology. As a PhD graduate student, he studied neuropharmacology related to both HIV and migraines. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Yale and master’s degree from the University of Washington in bioengineering. As a physician scientist, Nick has served as a clinical and postdoctoral research fellow in infectious diseases at the Oregon Health and Science University focused on tuberculosis and immunology.
- What might surprise you: As an infectious disease’s physician and researcher at Providence, he’s focused on anti-microbial resistance and developing strategies to address bacterial evolution. In the early stages of COVID-19, he also researched the potential for reusing N-95 masks (and yes – you can treat them effectively and reuse a few times, if necessary). He was also the author of the first clinical paper published by Truveta using the data within the Truveta Platform.
- Why Truveta: It’s the inspiring vision that real-time data could empower not only researchers, but physicians sitting in front of patients with insights that can immediately impact their care.
Fred Lee, MD, MPH
Fred is Vice President of business development and leads Life Science strategy at Truveta.
- By the CV: After earning his undergraduate degree in life sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his MD from Stony Brook University, and his MPH in preventative medicine and public health from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Fred completed his residency at University Hospital at Stony Brook focused on general surgery. It was there that he began his research career focused on ways in which the hospital could better mine data like clinical notes in a meaningful way to uncover insights to improve patient outcomes. His passion for digitally transforming health records took him to GE Healthcare where he helped to digitize one of the biggest healthcare systems in the world. That experience then led him to the world of precision medicine, where he started his own company to further the power of bringing together clinical insights and genomics. Following the success of that company, he worked at Oracle, Deloitte, and Amazon AWS to help further the power of real-world data to improve clinical research with a passion for data quality.
- What might surprise you: As the clinical research space started to converge with genomics, Fred started his own company in the emerging field of personalized healthcare, now known as precision medicine, focused on DNA sequencing. Fred was fascinated by the potential for the new velocity and volume of big data and the ways that could transform clinical care and research.
- Why Truveta: After a career as an academic surgeon, health system executive leader, precision medicine innovator, and technologist, Fred’s vision is that every decision in care delivery, research discovery, and drug development should be informed by as much of the world’s real-world clinical data as possible every time. Fred strongly believes Truveta is unique because of the breadth and scale it has to make that vision attainable.
Michael Simonov, MD
Michael is a director of Clinical Informatics at Truveta, a health informatics lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, and a practicing internal medicine physician for VA Connecticut.
- By the CV: Michael went to medical school at the University of Michigan, then went on to complete his internal medicine residency and clinical informatics fellowship at Yale University. At Yale, he served as the Medical Information Officer for Research and Director of Informatics at the Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator focusing on leveraging electronic health record data, machine learning, and data science for improving clinical outcomes. He led the Department of Medicine efforts for constructing and implementing a COVID research data repository.
- What might surprise you: Michael received his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan, and during medical school, he turned his love of computer programming into an online education company to help fellow med students prepare for the MCAT.
- Why Truveta: It’s simple — its mission, its people, and a desire to learn.
Michael Wang, MD
Michael is a director of Clinical Informatics at Truveta and an assistant professor practicing hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
- By the CV: Michael completed his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Harvard College with an emphasis on genetics after which he started to develop software for Athena Health. Michael went on to medical school at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. He then went on to residency at the Highland Hospital in Oakland, California and followed that up with a fellowship in Clinical Informatics at UCSF. He now practices hospital medicine at University of California San Francisco Health.
- What might surprise you: Michael’s passion for technology started in high school when he programmed his first database using Microsoft Access. He then combined that passion with a drive to address health equity when he and a high school friend helped found a volunteer program during his residency called Highland Health Advocates, which helps to connect patients with social services they might need (e.g., housing, transportation, legal services, etc.).
- Why Truveta: Truveta brings together the volume and diversity of data with the speed of real-time insights. That combination in the hands of clinicians and researchers truly can save lives.
Senthil Nachimuthu, MD, PhD, FAMIA
Senthil is a senior director of Clinical Informatics at Truveta and an adjunct assistant professor and research associate at University of Utah School of Medicine.
- By the CV: Senthil earned his medical degree at Stanley Medical College in Tamil Nadu, India. Both during and after medical school, he also served as a computer programmer, creating applications and systems for both surgical units and medical records management. Inspired by what data could mean for patient care, Senthil moved from India to Salt Lake City to study clinical informatics, where he earned a PhD with a focus on predictive and prescriptive analytics at the University of Utah. He worked at 3M in product development and health informatics, while also practicing as a clinical researcher and professor at the University of Utah.
- What might surprise you: The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has named Senthil a fellow in recognition of his contributions to the field of clinical informatics. He has also co-authored several industry standards now used throughout clinical informatics.
- Why Truveta: LinkedIn! Senthil saw a job posting match on LinkedIn, then when he clicked to learn more, he was inspired by how Truveta puts medical ethics, patient privacy, and scientific integrity at the heart of everything the company does.
Ryan Lee, MD
Ryan is a director of Clinical Informatics at Truveta.
- By the CV: After receiving his bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Brown University, Ryan attended medical school at University of California, San Francisco. While in medical school, he conducted clinical research in transplant patients sparked his curiosity about the power of data. While in surgical residency, his love of data and the complexity of documentation led him to explore more technology and research. He went on to work for both Google and Commure as a clinical specialist and product lead to help advance the clinical research field. He now brings his many years of clinical research and desire to help other researchers to advance patient care to his role at Truveta.
- What might surprise you: Ryan’s incredible attention to detail and desire to save other doctors time and energy led him to build time saving tools for nurses and physicians. He created a simple set of scripts that could simplify documentation, saving him and his fellow doctors an average of an hour a week. He went on to create a scheduling app that not only eased scheduling, but also saved time by improving the workflow for hospital staff.
- Why Truveta: In the clinical research world, research typically starts from scratch, often taking months to find patients for research projects. When he heard about Truveta, Ryan was inspired about the potential for changing the way research is done, giving researchers access to an entire platform with de-identified data from across the U.S.
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