Contact: Richard P. Gulla
781-434-7101
rgulla@mms.org
Boston, Mass. – April 7 – John Torous, M.D., a resident in psychiatry in the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program, and Gavin G. Ovsak, a Harvard Medical School student, are this year’s winners of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Information Technology Awards.
The honor recognizes the development of an information technology tool that helps physicians practice medicine, teach medicine, or pursue clinical research. Two awards of $3,000 each are presented annually by the Massachusetts Medical Society, one to a medical student and one to a resident or fellow.
This year’s winners:
John Torous, M.D. earned this year’s honor for his Mindful Moods project, a smartphone app designed to go beyond the feasibility of collecting patient self-reported data in real time to investigate the clinical validity of the data. The app assessed nine questions related to major depressive disorders on a daily basis and was piloted in 13 subjects who used the app for one month. The results of the study suggested that patients report symptoms of depression differently to a smartphone and that data collected from mobile platforms holds potential but requires further clinical validation before being used on a larger scale. Dr. Torous’s results are available at http://mental.jmir.org/2015/1/e8/. His work highlights the ease of creation and potential clinical use of real time data for major depressive disorders, but underscores the important role that clinicians must play in developing technology for health care.
Gavin G. Ovsak earned honors for his Parallel Patients project, an effort to bridge a physician’s potential gaps in medical knowledge and experience. Recognizing that the best medical care is driven by experience, Ovsak attempted to supplement a physician’s knowledge base by identifying patients similar to their own within an electronic health record system. With an anonymous electronic health record database of 40,000 patients from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Ovsak created a platform for clinicians to find the top ten most similar intensive care unit records for any given patient admission. This allowed physicians to view the management of prior cases, learn from the perspectives of other clinicians, and ultimately improve their outcomes. Ovsak is currently developing a website for physicians to evaluate their search results and provide feedback.
The Massachusetts Medical Society, with some 25,000 physicians and student members, is dedicated to educating and advocating for the patients and physicians of Massachusetts. The Society, under the auspices of NEJM Group, publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading global medical journal and web site, and Journal Watch alerts and newsletters covering 13 specialties. The Society is also a leader in continuing medical education providing accredited and certified activities across the globe for physicians and other health care professionals. Founded in 1781, MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in the country. For more information please visit www.massmed.org, www.nejm.org, or www.jwatch.org.
