Data Scientist (Clinical and Business Analytics)
Job Description
The goal of the Data Scientist will be to develop insights and create tools that enable Stanford Health Care (SHC) to improve patient outcomes and hospital efficiency. To do this, the Data Scientist will work with various types of SHC data, including electronic medical record data, patient survey data, real time location system data, financial data, etc.
SHC has various strategic improvement goals that require analytics support, such as:
- Improving patient flow through the hospital via a centralized operations center
- Reducing readmission rates
- Reducing infection rates
- Improving the patient experience
- Improving patients’ access to care
And other initiatives.
For each project, the Data Scientist will work with a team of physicians, nurses, administrators, quality improvement specialists, and others to define the key problem, identify root causes, plan and implement interventions, evaluate the impact, and establish systems to sustain the improvements. The Data Scientist will be involved in tasks such as:
- Building models to identify patients at risk of adverse events (e.g., readmission, sepsis)
- Forecasting demand for hospital services (e.g., ED volume, hospital admissions)
- Analyzing real time location system (RTLS) data to identify bottlenecks in hospital flow
- Implementing simulation models to allow the administrative and clinical staff to explore different scenarios and evaluate the impact on hospital flow
- Developing algorithms to optimize scheduling and improve resource coordination (e.g., radiology, physical therapy, transport, housekeeping, etc.)
- Analyzing which factors are most important to improving the patient experience
- Analyzing the impact of different interventions on outcomes, controlling for relevant factors
- Developing data visualizations that allow for actionable analysis and deeper insight
Job Qualifications
Education:
MS in Operations Research, Statistics, Applied Math, Physics, or related field; PhD preferred
Experience:
5 or more years of related work experience
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
- Strong background in statistical analysis, predictive modeling, machine learning, and optimization
- Ability to understand key business problems and to create analyses, models, and tools to help stakeholders address those problems
- Proficiency in SQL, R, and Python
- Experience in extracting new insights from complicated or dirty data sets
- Ability to communicate complex concepts in an understandable manner to senior level staff
- Ability to provide mentoring to team members
- Passion for solving health care problems
Preferred but not required:
- Proficiency with data visualization tools, such as Shiny or D3
- Knowledge and experience in health care
- Experience with Epic