Modern, American (1893-present), medical research has a rich tradition in re-purposing medical record
data to investigate anecdotal observations and latent predictors of disease, disease severity,
and treatment success. As clinical care recording moves from paper to digital, the sea of clinical data
becomes relatively accessible for clinical care research endeavours. However, these data were collected
and organized in a manner to support clinical care. The access of these data to support clinical research
represents a complicated problem with many facets: data transformation, data quality, data governance,
and patient privacy. Under the guidance of
Dr. James McKiernan, I focused on the issue of data transformation supporting secondary medical data
use for Urologic Outcomes Research. We have published on the impact of implementing a centralized
research data repository, which provided increased quality and quantity of scholarly articles,
check it out here.
In addition to implementing the foundation for quality, high throughput research,
my role facilitated the department's academic mission through faculty, resident, and
medical student research project management: study design, dataset creation, analysis and manuscript
preparation. This work also established a strong collaboration with the Memorial Sloane-Kettering
Cancer Center's CAISIS team.
Through my experience implementing the CRDR, I was connected to the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.
I found my connection to the sub-field of Clinical Research Informatics. The first major decision I made was selecting
Chunhua Weng as my research advisor.
Together, we are leveraging my experience as a database intermediary for the Department of Urology to understand the interaction between the
intermediary and the researchers.
This work is similar to the study of the Librarian Reference Interview, which is a skilled Q&A session to extract from the vaguest, most general request,
a clear idea of the what the inquirer really needs. We hope to use this model to map and improve the process understanding the complex information requests
presented by medical researchers. This may allow database intermediaries to retrieve datasets from the medical record, which are representative of clinical
research questions. We feel comparative effectiveness research can be expedited by an improved mechanism facilitating the transfer of the clinical researcher's
information need into an executable database query.
Our published and submitted works on this topic:
Biomedical Informatics
Chunhua Weng, Yu Li, Solomon Berhe, Mary Regina Boland, Junfeng Gao, Gregory W. Hruby,
Richard C. Steinman et al. "An Integrated Model for Patient Care and Clinical Trials (IMPACT) to
Support Clinical Research Visit Scheduling Workflow for Future Learning Health Systems." Journal
of biomedical informatics (2013).
Gregory W. Hruby, James McKiernan, Suzanne Bakken, and Chunhua Weng. "A centralized
research data repository enhances retrospective outcomes research capacity: a case report." Journal
of the American Medical Informatics Association 20, no. 3 (2013): 563-567.
Gregory W. Hruby, Mary Regina Boland, James J. Cimino, Junfeng Gao, Adam B. Wilcox,
Julia Hirschberg, and Chunhua Weng. "Characterization of the Biomedical Query Mediation Process."
AMIA Summits on Translational Science Proceedings 2013 (2013): 89.
Gregory W. Hruby, Jessica Ancker, and Chunhua Weng. "Use of Self-Service Query Tools Varies
by Experience and Research Knowledge." Studies in health technology and informatics
08/2015; 216:1023.
David A Hanauer, Gregory W. Hruby, Daniel G Fort, Luke V Rasmussen, Eneida A Mendonca,
Chunhua Weng. "What Is Asked in Clinical Data Request Forms? A Multi-site Thematic Analysis of
Forms Towards Better Data Access Support." AMIA SYMPOSIUM 2014:616-25. DECEMBER 2013
Gregory W. Hruby, James J Cimino, Vimla Patel, Chunhua Weng. Toward a cognitive task
analysis for biomedical query mediation. AMIA Jt Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2014 Apr 7;2014:218-22.
eCollection 2014.
Urologic Outcomes
Shen, Jing, Gregory W. Hruby, James M. McKiernan, Irina Gurvich, Michael Jeffrey Lipsky,
Mitchell C. Benson, and Regina M. Santella. "Dysregulation of circulating microRNAs and prediction
of aggressive prostate cancer." The Prostate 72, no. 13 (2012): 1469-1477.
Delgado-Cruzata, Lissette, Gregory W. Hruby, Karina Gonzalez, James McKiernan, Mitchel C.
Benson, Regina M. Santella, and Jing Shen. "DNA methylation changes correlate with Gleason score
and tumor stage in prostate cancer." DNA and cell biology 31, no. 2 (2012): 187-192.
Wosnitzer, Matthew S., Gregory W. Hruby, Alana M. Murphy, Lamont J. Barlow, Carlos
Cordonâ€Cardo, Mahesh Mansukhani, Daniel P. Petrylak, Mitchell C. Benson, and James M. McKiernan.
"A comparison of the outcomes of neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy for clinical T2â€T4aN0â€N2M0
bladder cancer." Cancer 118, no. 2 (2012): 358-364.
Since moving to NYC, I have morphed into a bicycle PHEN! It started as a means to get from
a to b. Some of my buddies and I then started touring trips.
We have toured the Northeast twice and the Pacific Northwest once.
I love cycling. So much that I have dabbled in bicycle refurbishment,
tell me what you think!
One thing led to another, and I started getting interested in bike racing. Specifically,
the NYC Gran Fondo. At first I was slow. The first two years was how one should not "race" a Fondo. In 2013,
I became a total CAT 6 rider. I dedicated 5 months to a training plan that I thought was well designed (more on this later).
Regardless, I gave it my all and from my perspective, I crushed it! In 2014,
I repeated my effort, and made the highlight real (That's me on the left).
After this experience, I started racing bikes in the amateur ranks. I also started asking myself, How do race coaches develop
their training plans? Well, there is a lot of science that goes into it, however, no one has ever mined the amazing accumulation
of data that is generated. One great source for this data is STRAVA.
I built a pet project that allows me to access STRAVA users data, TRAININGOPS.
This has been put on hold, but if you are interested in helping I am all ears :)
Finally, my last year at Columbia University as I student, I was honoured by being elected head of the
CU race team. Follow our progress :).
When I'm not cycling, I'm crushing the
gnar,
preferably in Colorado, but I'm not turning down the Northeast when the opportunity presents
itself!
electronic mail me
Department of Biomedical Informatics
Columbia University Medical Center
Attn: Greg Hruby
622 West 168th St. VC5
New York, NY 10032
copyright 2019