By Nidhee Krishnan
Nidhee is a product manager with HDAI, who transitioned a year ago from bedside care to healthcare innovation. Prior to this career change, she was in her second year of medical school and was conducting clinical research in parallel. She took a few moments to briefly share with us how her experiences in one world empowers her work in the next.
“The patient was fine, just five minutes ago!” I tell myself, as I race to hook my rapidly decompensating patient to an EKG and pulse oximeter as the physician charges in. Glancing worriedly at my patient, I try to recall the course of events, remembering them checking into the waiting room for a routine checkup, sitting showing no symptoms, no indications until entering the examination room, suddenly becoming diaphoretic, short of breath, and ultimately collapsing in my arms with chest tightness as I began the intake process. As I gave report to the charge nurse, I wondered if I had missed something, if there was something more that could have been done to predict this.
Studying medicine has taught me that the human body is extremely proficient in displaying warning signals when something is awry. However, symptoms are largely nonspecific until major deterioration has occurred, and the body decompensates. As a result, the diagnostic process remains largely reactive to this deterioration, despite the rapid pace of innovation in the industry. Contextualization of nonspecific symptoms is an immensely data-intensive task, especially in the digital world as healthcare data grows at an exponential rate.
Transitioning from bedside care to the world of product management in health analytics, has allowed me to take a pragmatic, aerial view of the same data. This allows me to utilize the emerging patterns to create and power intelligent, innovative tools to inform clinical decision-making, shifting the focus from symptom management to proactive, value-based practice.
At its core, innovation is moored in the resilience of our shared humanity. At HDAI, we rely on this to create solutions to empower our partners, recalling each story and experience as we endeavor to profoundly transform healthcare.
