For Durga Borkar, MD, eye surgeon and an associate professor of ophthalmology at Duke, transforming patient care in an age of rapid technological advancement involves more than being at the bedside or in the operating room. She wants to see the big picture.
She does that by analyzing large datasets. For example, she’s currently investigating how to improve outcomes for patients with diabetic retinopathy using insurance claims data.
“When you look at real-world data, you're getting a look at everybody who touches the healthcare system instead of just patients that are in a clinical trial. It’s an opportunity to see the whole story,” Borkar said.
The training she received in Duke’s Master of Management of Clinical Informatics Program (MMCi) is invaluable in planning and executing these analyses, she said. The one-year education program trains professionals in how to identify data-driven strategies and use them to enhance patient care.
During the program, she moved beyond simple analyses and learned to build her own datasets, a skill that is useful when analyzing data from multiple sets of electronic health records.
Perhaps more importantly, the program grew her skills in collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines to make things work better in the clinic. “Whenever we think about adding a new piece of equipment or a new workflow, some of the skills I learned in MMCi helped me think about who the stakeholders are, what’s the value proposition for this new initiative, and how do we get people on board?” said Borkar, who graduated from MMCi in 2021.
“Each class of MMCi students is a combination of healthcare workers, and information technology or industry professionals,” she said. “The program really amplified what I already knew, but it put it right in front of me: healthcare and informatics is really a team sport.”