Morgan Simons

DIHI Scholar

During my year with DIHI, I have worked on several projects, but primarily focused on a project tackling the identification and treatment of patients with corticosteroid induced hyperglycemia. The goal of this project was to bring these patients to the attention of endocrinologists earlier in an effort to prevent the negative sequela of prolonged hyperglycemia. At the outset of the project, my role was to assist with data curation and analysis, but as project unfolded, I was offered the opportunity to take a larger role in the development of a machine learning model that identified which patients were at risk, and I took it. The awesome members of my team were willing to give me the space and opportunity to further my learning and delve into an area of research I had not worked in before. Because of their trust and support, I was able to build the model with the help of others, and it will soon be deployed with an accompanying clinical workflow in a pilot on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at DUH. Through this project I learned not only the hard skills of data science, but several soft skills around leadership strategies and team communication that I will use in my future career as an internist. Working with DIHI has changed how I envision my future career; rather than focusing on purely clinical work, I now want to continue to apply the data science and implementation lessons I have learned to problems I encounter in my future clinical practice.

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