Welcome to Biomed Bites, a weekly feature that introduces readers to some of Stanford’s most innovative biomedical researchers.
The promise of precision health comes to life in the work of Mark Hlatky, MD, professor of health research and policy and of medicine. Hlatky works in the trendy field of comparative effectiveness research. But unlike the hardware-heeled shoe splashing the runway, this body of work is only going to grow in importance, as statistical methods, computing power and data sets become more available and more robust.
Here's Hlatky from the video above: "We apply a lot of statistical methods to extract out what it is that works and then try to figure out if it works differently in different types of people."
He's a cardiologist, so he specializes in cardiovascular research and is proud to have contributed to current clinical guidelines on treating patients with heart disease. "One of the beauties of this kind of research is that it has pretty immediate clinical applications," Hlatky says.
Learn more about Stanford Medicine’s Biomedical Innovation Initiative and about other faculty leaders who are driving biomedical innovation here.
Previously: The Lancet documents waste in research, proposes solutions, Stanford expert weighs in on new guidelines for statin use and Heart bypass or angioplasty? There's an app for that
