Ahmad named co-lead of NUCATS Data and Informatics

The Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) is pleased to announce that Faraz Ahmad, MD, MS, Assistant Professor in Medicine (Cardiology) and Preventive Medicine (Statistics and Informatics) and Associate Director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence, is assuming the role of co-lead of NUCATS Data and Informatics. As a physician, Ahmad brings clinical expertise to the role, complementing his deep experience with informatics and data science. Ahmad joins Co-Lead Kristi Holmes, PhD, associate dean for knowledge management. 

In this Q&A, Ahmad discusses his background, interests and the importance of good infrastructure and collaboration. 

What is your background and how did you get into informatics? 
Before starting medical school, I spent some time in the early 2000s as a consultant helping hospitals buy electronic health record (EHR) systems. That’s when I first became interested in how technology can be used to improve quality of care and health system operations. In residency, our hospital used primarily paper records with a computerized provider order entry system. I remember being really frustrated by not having quick access to data on my patients when trying to evaluate them. That feeling led me to spend a summer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT during residency to learn more about using EHR data to improve quality of care. When I joined Northwestern, I realized informatics was a great home for me to build a research career dedicated to this space. 

What unique perspectives do you bring to the role of data and informatics co-lead? 
As someone who is clinically active and trained in informatics and epidemiology, tackling research problems is always rooted in clinical medicine. I've also built tools to improve quality of care and research operations within the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. The expertise I bring is that clinical lens and a track record of building tools at scale for quality and research. My background complements the diverse methods informatics expertise we already have in NUCATS. 

Can you describe a few of your projects? 
I’m interested in developing, evaluating and scaling AI-enabled technologies in health systems. Examples from our current portfolio include developing an AI model to identify patients with worsening cardiogenic shock across the health system and using implementation science methods to redesign workflows and deploy AI-enabled cardiovascular diagnostics to detect often missed conditions, like cardiac amyloidosis. My goal is to build the infrastructure needed to efficiently conduct pragmatic effectiveness-implementation trials that rigorously evaluate AI-enabled technologies in healthcare settings. 

I'm also passionate about building efficient deep phenotyping registries with data that we're collecting as part of routine care, integrating it with data we're collecting through research, and developing scalable infrastructure that streamlines data collection and integration. We’re currently launching a registry for cardiac amyloidosis by enrolling patients, collecting patient-reported outcome measures through REDCap, then linking their EHR data, imaging data and electrocardiogram (ECG) data over time.  

How does collaboration have an impact on the field of informatics and data science? 
I think collaboration is at the heart of what we do in informatics and data science. What interests a lot of us is the question of how we collaborate and build tools that help further the entire community. That's something I've learned firsthand from one of my long-standing mentors, Dr. Abel Kho (director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine). Informatics is such an interdisciplinary field that brings people and projects together.