#HCS2019 Bonus Interview with Farzan Sasangohar

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Your weekly podcast things. Hey everyone this is a lease Alex I'm here at the health care symposium 2019 here at Chicago Illinois and with me today is bars on sauce and go hard he is an assistant professor at the department of industrial systems engineering at Texas a and M. university welcome thank you so much how are you doing today it's a great audience excellent excellent so you know what what brings you to the the healthcare symposium so healthcare symposium I've been involved with delta symposium since its beginning. Attended almost every year since since 2014 I was in's several committees and I I I was tracked here last year so this is a great environment to get together the you know cutting edge research in human factors in healthcare. Meat industry projects and industry folks it's a great opportunity for networking and a lot of professionals it's a great venue for my students to come in and get exposed to this network and present the research and get feedback. That's where we come in every day in the last 3 years the pads Morton 20 presentations and lectures presentations and posters at the ATS has fantastic yeah I know one of my challenges is just trying to narrow it down because there's so many good talks all happen and things and I am absolutely not so you are currently an assistant professor at Texas a and M. so can you tell us a little bit about your position and how you got there absolutely Simon assistant professor the industrial systems engineering at Texas a and M. but I'm also assistant professor in environmental occupational health in the school of public health at Texas a and M.. And have an affiliation with Houston Methodist hospital system professor of in the center for outcomes research and the department of surgery. I joined a nearly after I completed my PhD at universal Toronto. Since 2015 I've been the director of a lab there at 6 and then call the black hawk and Reaganomics. Do a lot of healthcare him factors research but also a lot of other domains yeah so what kind of research are you involved in some a special T. he's user centered design a mobile health telehealth and remote patient monitoring tools and technologies I have active projects in remote monitoring technologies for diabetes hypoglycemia detection mental health and close tremor caused Matix stress disorder PTSD management opioid withdrawal management projects in telehealth for special populations such as elderly pediatric underserved population veterans population student population and then I do a lot of systems engineering type research resilience engineering something I'm really interested so we have projects looking to resilience of emergency management emergency response if you look at the impact of these emerging telehealth systems on providers work and how to model those and understand opportunism limitations there in the also have an active line of research on persuasive design. The tools and systems to see how we can have a long term behavioural change is the new regiments in new era of usability so you use the term a couple times telehealth systems can you elaborate a little bit on what that means absolutely Sir telehealth is a combination of tools and technologies. To to deliver provide here remotely okay individually so a lot of terms are used interchangeably telemedicine telehealth but my specialty is a particular type of telehealth just continuous remote monitoring is a tools that they're sent surveys to get information from patients and providers. Continuously. 47 always on available technologies mobile health tools like my Fitbit just like your fitness apps so that is empowering so now with dad you can be much more predictive. We can really exercise predictive medicine not be reactive so you you touch an interesting point that actually came up recently so with this you know capturing data longitudinally over time and looking at that to then predict medical trends so you know I know 11 of the big questions out there in the fifties you know how can we use this this data it's not just you know tracking my current heart rate in my steps per day but looking over time so so how are you envisioning. This data working between the patient and the physician. Absolutely so it's a challenge yeah it's an engineering challenge to get all that data and you know make it information make it something providers can manipulate and make decisions also the multiple challenges they're just big data analytics so how do you make sense of this large amount of data. How do you put it in the context of care and other contextual variables. And then even that is not enough even if you can make sense of that data to integrate integrate that into providers work. There are many many challenges trust is one understand if these patients even trustees technology's going home with. And more than 5. Compliance is another one how do you persuade them to take care of themselves make these measurements we asked. It's not just on the basis of providers. P. 5 C. 6 trust issues we have to work on that yeah it is there's a lot of systems engineering modeling going on to really understand it's tough issues to make sure these technologies can be successful missions are going to use them for a long time ago just pick him up. Today and tomorrow and next week actually uses for years. That takes interdisciplinary approach must ballistic approach than we used to human factors engineering is in really good position to to look at the scan challenges. Absolutely especially because it's not just 1 and 1 user group anymore it's the interaction between the 2 and then the unique challenges on each side absolutely fascinating so I've seen your name in a couple places at on our conference you know schedule so are you presenting we have a presentation tomorrow on EHR downtimes and cyber security issues all right let's see H. R. for our audience health records okay I'm sorry so it's been a challenge to keep that data secure war. It's not just making usable there's a lot of security privacy issues surrounding around each or usage. So my post doctoral fellow at Houston Methodist hospital doctor Ethan Larson is going to give a talk tomorrow on his work on cyber security and downtime uses the day it's on mobile hospitals. We have 5 other posters today and tomorrow 22. The present righty of issues including persuasive design methodologies including our our war 18 continues monitoring the veterans were diagnosed with PTSD we have a poster on systems modeling of peace and glory and the integration of telehealth providers and sorry providers worry and positions were. And we also have a close run resilience engineering and how to keep these healthcare systems more resilient which we heard a lot about this morning during the opening. It was a fantastic talk by Dr it was it was largely be having him on the show and a little bit so here more details about it with persuasion design the elaborate a little bit on what that means absolutely so as I mentioned. I really think usability is a term of the past. Term of the eighties and nineties usability is not sufficient. Requirements to to have products being used out there anymore the something on top of usability really mean that's persuasive. If I have to be able to one of these devices and technologies at home and that's that's important critical areas to look at. We need to have technologist or Facebook right some people want to. If any other persuaded to use them it's a whole era and whole new regimen and you. Idea of literature. In our lab we look at this list of design mobile health apps. Health behaviors and health models and how to solicit those must have come up with methodologies to solicit people's help police. And and use that in to barely decided east Mostar going home home telemonitoring is is is the trend of the look and I saw it in the post of the present today to talk about some early findings so integration synthesis of the literature on behavioral mental health or health believes or persuasive models out there and it's all about understanding the user great understanding context and see you know when you can figure those notifications then you can introduce these new technologies people's life. Is extremely complicated it's not that easy but. I think the contributing quite a bit. Absolutely all asking those questions up front is the first stop at. That's fantastic well I am looking forward to that. Now you know it's it. You you had quite a journey to get you to where you are today a lot of our our audience listeners are you know just getting into human factors and learning about it or maybe they know a little bit about it and it's just getting exposed to different areas you know so based on your journey and your experiences what do you wish you'd known coming into it or what would you want to share with you know those getting into human factors in healthcare absolutely to me human factors is booming. Going field. For students and early career professionals I think is is most critical to get involved in the society at a societal level and serving volunteer that's the best way to identify mentors switch to me is critical to be successful in this field so I wish I'd known how open a to Z. as in society is to committee membership and you know service at the national level so even though I was a student I contributed to our students at the local student chapter I started one was president for 2 other university students chapters but then it took me a few years to understand you know more involvement with the committees and the society level volunteering I really highly recommend it in the career folks and students to get involved as much as they can to know more people identified their mentors and have an impact. In the field to mentors not just you know where they're located but then within the broader human factor also just internally. Reach out to external mentors and the best way to identify them is to be here in these annual meetings and international healthcare symposium to be involved in the community volunteering or take leadership roles early and that's what I did. And I I and I tribute my success if there's any a lot of good mentorship. A lot of mentorship coming from the society. Some very active now after finding jobs and you know grown up the ladders. The 2 committees now in our community and student affairs committee contests and I'm also selected to be the next chair of healthcare technical group our society. That's fantastic. Well that is really excellent advice mentorship really is key and not just you know having someone to ask questions to you but then you know having those connections when you go to these types of events. Well thank you so so much for being on the show with us for those who would like to follow up with any questions or connect where my our our viewers regio absolutely you can reach me by email my email is a single higher at 10 U. T. A. M. U. dot EDU okay can also visit our our laboratory bedside as both a slab the time you that 80 you. Perfect and we'll be posting those links in the show notes as well for our viewers said well thank you so much and at the end of each of our shows we always ends with the it depends because everything in human factors depends so on the count of 3 have you say it with me 123 it depends thanks so much.