Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Lipika Samal, MD, MPH completed a General Internal Medicine research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a Masters of Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and additional coursework in a National Library of Medicine-funded training program in Biomedical Informatics in 2007. During her fellowship she assisted colleagues with numerous articles about the use of health information technology (HIT) by patients including: 1) a survey of women visiting the Baltimore city sexually transmitted infections clinic, 2) a survey of HIV patients, 3) a survey of diabetes patients, and 4) an AHRQ-funded systematic review of the literature on consumer health informatics. Taken together, these studies helped to dispel the myth that these disadvantaged patients cannot participate in technology-driven healthcare. Each of these articles contributed to the literature on HIT interventions to reduce health disparities through standardization of care, as well as health IT-enabled patient engagement.

In 2010, she joined the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) as a clinician investigator in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She has received K23 and R01 awards from NIDDK address chronic kidney disease (CKD) through clinical decision support (CDS) integrated at the point of care in the outpatient setting. The K23 award project included design, implementation and evaluation of an EHR tool that extracted data from the EHR and calculated the Tangri equation 5-year risk of developing kidney failure. The R01 project developed from the lessons learned in these projects and it focuses on improving hypertension management in stage 3-4 CKD in primary care.