Grant allows Yale researcher to develop automated tools for better heart healthcare.
Indian American Yale researcher Rohan Khera, has received a K23 career development grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to develop automated tools for better heart healthcare.
An assistant professor of medicine and investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Khera is a graduate of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences where he was a National Young Investigator Scholarship awardee.
The grant is for “Evaluating and Improving Utilization of Evidence-Based Medical Therapy in Patients with Heart Failure using Automated Tools in the Electronic Health Record,” according to a Yale press release.
It allows, Khera a cardiologist with expertise in data science, health policy, and healthcare quality, to develop automated tools that incorporate both structured and unstructured data elements from the electronic health record (EHR) in defining care quality.
His work will use advanced machine learning models and natural language processing to better phenotype patients with heart failure, with the goal to personalize their care and improve their outcomes.
Dr. Khera’s research focuses on evaluating the quality of care and patient outcomes across hospitals in the United States.
His work has specifically addressed the vast variation in adherence to evidence-based therapy, uptake of novel care practices and treatments, and rigorous evaluation of national health policies and their effects on hospital practices and patient outcomes.
In his previous work, Khera indicated that both the incidence of heart failure and adverse health outcomes among patients with heart failure continue to be major challenges, and improving the quality of care could improve the health of patients with this disease.
Mentors on the grant include Yale Cardiovascular Medicine faculty Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, Eric Velazquez, MD, and Erica Spatz, MD, MHS.
Other mentors include faculty in clinical informatics, Cynthia Brandt MD, MPH and Ted Melnick, MD, MHS, and in computer science, Dragomir Radev, PhD.
Khera is a general cardiologist at the Yale New Haven Hospital, data science, health policy and outcomes researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, and an investigator at Yale’s Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.
During his internal medicine residency training at the University of Iowa and his cardiology fellowship training at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dr. Khera received the American College of Cardiology’s Young Investigator Award and the Francois Abboud Young Investigator Award.
He was also inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society for his academic accomplishments.
Dr. Khera’s work leverages national registries and large databases, and increasingly focuses on the use of the electronic health record and advanced data science tools to evaluate both the quality of care patients receive and their outcomes.
The work he has led has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), BMJ, Circulation, JAMA Internal Medicine, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and JAMA Cardiology, among others.