Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com August 3, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 5 Ibrahim uses data to reshape healthcare delivery By John Stearns jstearns@HartfordBusiness.com D r. Danyal Ibrahim is rewarded when he helps a patient suffering from accidental or intentional poisoning, adverse reaction to medications or a seri- ous sting or bite. He specializes in toxicol- ogy as an emergency department physician at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. But beyond the one-on-one care, he's also interested in addressing the needs of larger populations — something he's actively pursuing as chief data and analyt- ics officer at the hospital, a newly created position he filled in October. Investment in such a position isn't common in health care, Ibrahim said. He remains an ER doctor-toxicology spe- cialist, but he's part analyst now, too. Or, as Ibrahim put it, "full doctor and full analyst." His chief data and analytics role emerged from his interest in the public aspects of health care. "I've always [been] interested in look- ing at the system as a whole — looking at the health of a group of people or large group of people," said Ibrahim, 47. In the rapidly evolving world of health care, good data is vital, especially as pay- ment models shift more from fee-for-ser- vice to pay-for-performance, making data critical to analyzing where health systems need to improve, he said. When Ibrahim joined St. Francis in 2008 as chief of toxicology in the depart- ment of emergency medicine, he sought ways to bolster his skills in the larger context of public health and attained a master's degree in public health through Johns Hopkins University. He gained sta- tistical insight and learned how to under- stand and deal with numbers pertaining to large groups of people. "That gave me a great opportunity to learn about how data flows and where it comes from, what processes it goes through and where it lands and appreciate a lot more the value of data," mostly in the context of his emergency duties, he said. Then an opportunity arose to get a master's degree in healthcare delivery science from Dartmouth College, learn- ing from people transforming health care during the industry's tectonic changes. "It gave me a fantastic insight into … how do you really impact, and how do you really get involved in change that will impact the health of a large number of peo- ple. I realized that for us to go in the right direction, for our health system to make decisions, they need information, they need data," Ibrahim said. "And at the heart of my new position is the ability to produce data that will aid better decision making." Ibrahim said his goal is to integrate data from throughout the hospital system — in areas like patient quality and safety, finance and IT — to produce data relevant and meaningful to the patient, and also help clinicians and hospital leaders make better decisions. Even though data touches many areas, Ibrahim hopes the data he organizes and pro- duces ultimately makes patients' care better. The problem with health care in the U.S. is the way it's delivered, not the tech- nology or treatment, he said. "How do we touch patients' unmet needs in a way that's convenient, mean- ingful, sensitive to them," Ibrahim said. "If you do want to do that really well, figure out the group of patients that have commonality or unmet needs, organize care around them in a way that's meaning- ful to them and then measure how you're doing," he said. "You can only do that well if you also have good, meaningful data that will help you make better decisions." Ibrahim said it was serendipity that he ended up in North America. After getting his undergraduate degree in Kuwait, he visited the U.S. on an exchange program, intending to return to his home country for medical school. But he was influ- enced to stay as the first Gulf War unfolded. With friends in Canada, he went to Toron- to to get a master's degree and then obtained his medical degree. He came to Connecticut in 2007, working for a year at Windham Hos- pital, where he helped start a toxicology pro- gram, before joining St. Francis. Dr. Surendra Khera, St. Francis' vice president of medical affairs and chief medical/quality officer, said Ibrahim was chosen for the analytics role because he has a keen understanding of patient care, a mindset that is geared to using data to drive systems change and the leadership ability to influence change. n H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S Ibrahim is St. Francis Hospital's first chief data and analytics officer. 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THINK • PLAN • BUILD Dr. Danyal Ibrahim Emergency department physician with a specialty in toxicology, and chief data and analytics officer, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Highest education: Doctor of medicine, University of Toronto. Executive insights: Focus on the patient, figure out their unmet needs, what's meaningful to them, organize care to address those needs and then measure results over time. Data should be a discipline, much like finance is a discipline. WE HAVEN'T BUILT THE FUTURE YET. BUT WE DO HAVE THE BLUEPRINTS. At the Wallingford office of Burns & McDonnell, everything we do — including engineering, construction, aviation, environmental and program management services — is focused on making New England, and the world, a better place. What we do is about more than design and build. It's about making cities of the future come to life. It's about bolstering economies, and connecting people. 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