Career objective

To understand and optimize of the provision of health care and health insurance through advanced data wrangling, visualization and analytics.

Work Experience

October 2011 - Present

Data Architect

Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Develop, maintain, and consult on research data ETL processes, on a team of 4 people. Interface with KP Washington Enterprise Information Management to keep apprised of regional initiatives (e.g., changes to underlying business data systems, new data mart releases). Serves as a “data sherpa” to research projects, helping them to refine their questions and goals, and match them to existing data. Consults especially on multi-organization projects (e.g., those done under the auspices of the Health Care Services Research Network).

Established several novel and complex data warehouse Quality Assurance reports, including comparisons between current-build and past-builds, and unique depictions of laboratory results. Investigated seeming-anomalies in prescribing and benefits data, and pushed standards for expressing confidence of complete data capture for HMO enrollees.

Propounded a best-practice convention for production ETL processes which ensures high availability and easy rollback in the case of late-detected defects.

Disseminates knowledge of data, business processes and tools via written articles, wiki documentation, code libraries and oral presentations in multiple venues.

March 2010 - May 2012

VDW Operations Committee Co-Lead

Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN)

Led the technical aspects of the HMO Research Network's VDW Operations Committee, including the VDW Implementation Group. This work involved:

  • designing a process for evaluating and deciding on more than 100 proposed changes to the VDW dataset specifications,
  • grouping the approved changes into "milestones" and negotiating timelines with staff charged with implementing those changes at 15 different HMOs,
  • devising an objective, test-based process for sites to demonstrate their milestone achievements, coordinating the activity of the numerous workgroups who created the test programs,
  • documenting each milestone, and communicating site progress both to users and to the HMORN Asset Stewardship Committee, and
  • supporting users during the transition.

Introduced and promoted several software engineering tools/practices to the community of VDW implementers—specifically, source code control, formal issue tracking, and the use of objective, automated quality assurance testing. Worked with the Asset Stewardship and Governing Board of the HMORN to enable open issue tracking (a significant political achievement).

October 2003 - October 2011

Technical Specialist

Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Provided technical leadership for a distributed team of analysts creating and exploiting a cross-site Virtual Data Warehouse—a federated health services database with a common query interface (in the form of SAS programs). Devised methods for standardizing and sharing common program elements in the form of SAS macros, and wrote a large number of those macros (e.g. for evaluating continuous enrollment, text processing for names and addresses). Maintained Group Health's VDW datasets. Served as project programmer for numerous, concurrently run multi-site studies, negotiating requirements and timelines for cohort extractions, designing cross-site data flows, and creating tracking databases. Designed, implemented and supported a generalized study subject tracking system, with a data/event driven architecture sufficiently flexible to support many diverse studies without the need for reprogramming.

June 2000 - October 2003

Database Programmer / Analyst

Lockheed-Martin Missles & Space

Designed, developed, tested, debugged and supported data-based application programs using all of the following technologies: SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Designer, Oracle Developer, Visual Basic (Script, .NET, VBA), Microsoft Access, Windows Scripting Host, ASP, ASP.NET, COM, WMI, FoxPro, ADSI, Source Safe and others. Saw projects through all phases of the software development life cycle. Took advantage of locally developed software development standards and source code control infrastructure to create well-documented, maintainable applications. For example, one Oracle Forms application tracked the contents and circulation of a department library of technical manuals. Served as backup Oracle DBA.

March 1998 - June 2000

Research Analyst / Programmer

Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Did various data pulls, integration & reporting to support a rotating portfolio of concurrent research projects, including especially the Cancer Research Network.

Education

1996

1997

Juris Doctor

Master of Arts

University of Arizona

Joint Degree Program: Psychology, Public Policy And Law

1988

Bachelor of Arts

State University of New York: Binghamton

Psychology

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