Name: Mohan

Year: Senior

Major(s): Economics

CFS Concentration: Field Studies in Business Culture

My experience in the classroom as an undergrad at Northwestern has given me some of the some of the economic & entrepreneurship-driven frameworks that helped me understand issues in the operations of our healthcare systems – yet, I lacked the experiential knowledge required to meaningfully engage with providers in systems level changes. As such, I looked to opportunities outside of the classroom in the form of independent projects – these projects spanned from patient facing m-Health solutions to checklists developed for clinicians. It was through these projects, I started to realize the vastly interdisciplinary nature of healthcare systems quality improvement projects. To be really viable, I needed to learn directly from a program that focused on an interdisciplinary approach to a shared vision for healthcare delivery: coordinated, safe, and patient-centered. And that’s how I came to learn of Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety & Quality, and more specifically of project EMERGE which aimed to develop an integrative, process-oriented decision support tool.

My work at the Armstrong Institute at Johns Hopkins these past 6 months has helped create a clear path and well placed mentors (both in systems engineering at the JHU Applied Physics Lab, project managers at Armstrong Institute, and ICU physicians & nurses at Johns Hopkins’ surgical ICU) in my journey. Some of the lessons I take away from this 6 month internship are inexplicable – the profound mentorship relations I’ve gained while at Hopkins Medicine & the incredible network.