Exciting Year for Industry Immersion

Industy Immersion is one of the most exciting parts of the MIDP curriculum. It is where our students have an opportunity to work in industry and apply the skills used in their prior education as well as those acquired in medical school and the MIDP curriculum. Utilizing their combined skills enriches the medical school experience and widely broadens the scope of our students' experience.

Pulak Goswami and Dennis Zhou are at General Electric Healthcare in Waukesha, Wisconsin from September-December for their industry immersion. Their work focuses on using artificial intelligence to evaluate x-rays. They have been having an amazing experience and are learning first-hand how new medical technologies are ideated and developed within industry. They have both applied what they learned from Innovation Activism & Altruism and IDEA Lab to identify clinical customer needs and design new user interfaces and prototypes. They also initiated an exciting Industry Immersion was one of the reasons he chose MIDP. Industry immersion has offered him a unique perspective on how teams can tackle complex healthcare problems and translate technology towards bedside applications. He wanted to learn how medical technologies are developed outside of academia and has gained valuable experience with technology commercialization and AI applications in diagnostic imaging. He is very thankful for how supportive and welcoming the mobile x-ray team has been.

Per Pulak, Industry Immersion at GE HealthCare has been one of the highlights of medical school. He is excited to learn about recent advancements in the field of artificial intelligence driven computer vision and apply these techniques to a real world problem. Working in a biotech environment has offered him a fresh perspective on how truly interdisciplinary teams can work together to advance healthcare. He is very grateful for the support and encouragement of the mobile x-ray team.

October Forum Speakers

One of the best parts of MIDP is the community built and expanded around our forums. With great speakers from within and without the Vanderbilt community addressing a wide range of topics, it is at the heart of MIDP to forge connections that bring us closer to innovative industry as well as the altruism of making healthcare better.

Kimberly N. Vinson, M.D., is an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 2003 and completed her internship in General Surgery and her residency in Otolaryngology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. She also completed a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice at the Vanderbilt Voice Center. Vinson’s clinical practice specializes in voice, swallowing, and breathing disorders.

In November 2011, she was named Assistant Dean for Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s newly reorganized Office for Diversity Affairs. Her focus is on improving diversity and inclusion with the medical school and clinical learning environments. She is also the Program Director of the Undergraduate Clinical Research Internship Program (UCRIP) for exceptional undergraduate students interested in pursuing a career in medicine and the director for the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine pipeline programs with regional colleges and universities. In 2020, she was promoted to Associate Dean for Diversity Affairs. Her talk about cultural sensitivity and the day to day care and communication in examining room was enlightening and made for great conversation.

Ralph Passarella is the CEO and Co-Founder of Reify Health, where he and his team are working to accelerate the development of new, life-saving therapies. Reify Health’s technology is used by biopharma companies and research sites in over 60 countries, and their work has accelerated the development of new treatments that are used by millions of people worldwide. Through their work at Reify, Ralph and team also co-founded Signal Vine, an education technology company which has helped millions of high school and college students across the U.S. navigate the administrative parts of higher education. He spoke to us about innovating when you don't quite have all the answers and what it is like to change directions when you are a student in medical school.

Dr. Subha Airan-Javia attended medical school at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and completed her residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the CEO and Founder of CareAlign. CareAlign is the culmination of 10+ years of research and work at Penn Medicine in workflow, transitions, clinical teamwork and informatics. After launching the application successfully at Penn Medicine, she and her team spun the company out and Dr. Airan-Javia now leads the team full time.

CareAlign is revolutionizing the way care is orchestrated in any situation where a patient is receiving care from multiple people at once. CareAlign addresses some of the biggest, most intractable health care challenges by bringing information together about a patient and presenting it in a clinician friendly point of view. CareAlign makes sure that: health care providers spend less time in front of computers and more time with patients; that information known by one person is actionable by all; and that no piece of information is more than one or two clicks away - even if that information is held in multiple different sources. CareAlign is not an EHR, we compliment EHRs, helping health systems leverage their investment in them and extend their functionality to mobile workflow and to orchestrate care.

Her talk focused on how an idea for making things better when she was a resident became her full time career. She generated excellent conversation and a new perspective on starting a company as a busy resident.

MIDP's Newest Member

The MIDP was delighted to meet their newest member born to Eden Maloney and her husband Mike. Little Lily has lived a very loved two months with her mom and dad in the 12th South neighborhood of Nashville. Eden is taking a bit of time to settle into her new role as mom. Eden's other roles include PhD, med student and member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. We are so excited for Eden and her family!!

Photography by Dr. Trent Rosenbloom

Associate Director of the MIDP, Dr. Trent Rosenbloom, again gifts us with pictures taken on his extensive hikes. Our stunning header is from Stone Door and is a picture of Tennessee's most famous tree.

Our footer photograph is from South Coumberland State Park. Tennessee is at its finest in the fall.