A desire to improve how data is kept by health systems and used to improve patient care turned into a career for the medical school’s founding chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics.
Philip Kroth, MD, MSc, is the founding chair and professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics, formerly the Program in Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Kroth has a secondary appointment in the medical school’s Department of Medicine. He started his new role at WMed on Jan. 6.
“It is exciting to finally get started at WMed,” Dr. Kroth said. “Everyone has been extremely kind and welcoming.”
Dr. Kroth comes to the medical school with years of experience as a clinician, educator and researcher at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. He was a tenured professor in the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center where he was the director of Biomedical Informatic Research, Training and Scholarship unit. He also had a secondary appointment as a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.
He earned his MD degree from the Medical College of Ohio in 1995 and completed a residency in internal medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed the National Library of Medicine Biomedical Informatics Fellowship at the Regenstrief Institute at Indiana University Medical Center in 2003. Also in 2003, he earned a Master of Science in Clinical Research from Indiana University. He is board certified in internal medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine and in clinical informatics by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
Dr. Kroth said he sees many opportunities within the medical school, including to further integrate clinical informatics training into the MD curriculum and to make a difference in patient care in Southwest Michigan. He said the leadership’s vision to create a department of Biomedical Informatics attracted him to the medical school.
At WMed, Dr. Kroth said he wants to establish a research program to collaborate with other researchers to manage data and optimize its use. His research has included how health information technology has unintended consequences on the physician burnout rate. He also continues to research what information is critical to patient health and how that information can be used to drive quality and continuous improvement.
Dr. Kroth aims to establish a practice-based research network to use data to better manage public health issues. He said the network would allow the medical school to look for opportunities to leverage existing health data with the goal of improving care for everybody, that could work around public health problems in a way that hasn’t been done in this community before. He said the better use of technology could be used to control costs for patients and save money for all providers, along with improving care.
“WMed’s role in the community is critical to changing that culture that will allow us to leverage technology across all the healthcare institutions in Southwest Michigan,” Dr. Kroth said. “I feel that a new organization like WMed that has successfully bridged many gaps and has bridged historically fierce competitors to collaborate in really wonderful ways that benefit them, benefit everybody, that’s exciting,” Dr. Kroth said. “I want to be a part of it.”
Dr. Kroth is a New York native. He and his wife, who is a medicine-pediatrics physician, have four children.