By: Susan Wiley
At the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON), we know that two very different heads are better than one. We were an early adopter of interprofessional education, a practice that creates space for nurses, doctors, and even health care entrepreneurs to learn and grow together. We know that sharing insights from a different discipline’s different perspective is key to transforming great ideas into great health care innovations.
To that end, we host an eight-week summer internship here in the Office for Science and Innovation (OSI); this summer we hosted Austin Hartman, a Biomedical/Medical Engineering major about to start his senior year at Johns Hopkins University. Austin brought his biotech perspective to several projects with nursing professors Drs. Jason Farley, Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, and Sue Verrillo, and explored engineering, business and salesmanship, and health care innovation with Nursing Advisory Board Member and CEO of Blickman Steel Anthony Lorenzo.
Austin worked with Dr. Jason Farley (director of the REACH Initiative and JHSON’s PhD program) to expand the smartphone application PrEPme—the app connects patients in Maryland to resources for PrEP, the pre-exposure drug to reduce a patient’s risk of contracting HIV. Austin described the impact of his work with Dr. Farley—and the intersection of technology and health: “This stuff excites me because if it takes off, you’re helping a lot of people, you’re saving a lot of lives.”
“You have researchers, you have people who do the community outreach, and you have business people, and when they all get together some cool stuff can happen,” Austin said of his projects with Dr. Sue Verillo. Sue investigates how to use machine learning to monitor vital signs; her article, “Using Continuous Vital Sign Monitoring to Detect Early Deterioration in Adult Postoperative Inpatients,” was published in the August 2018 issue of Nursing Care Quality. Sue and Austin worked with Mr. Lorenzo and the OSI’s grant writer Susan Wiley to establish connections in the area of machine learning. Sue is now working with several internal and external collaborators to secure research funding.
Austin also assisted Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah begin the process of using technology to expand her work in improving outcomes for immigrant populations with hypertension.
At the Office for Science and Innovation at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, we help connect collaborators—emerging and established—from across the Johns Hopkins systems to others around the world. So join us in October when leaders from JHSON and the Whiting School of Engineering will host a one-day, interprofessional workshop, “Enhancing Clinical Intelligence with Machine Intelligence to Improve Patient Outcomes.” The workshop will explore the use of computing technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence for improving clinical research and practice.
If you require help with any research funding support, the Office for Science and Innovation provides resources including editorial and biostatistics support, grant writing advice as well as facilitating connections with internal and external research and support resources.
