The Center for Translational Data Science will be hosting Dr. Theresa L. Walunas (she/her/hers) on Friday, September 17th at 12pm to host a talk titled “A Pragmatic Approach to Modeling Human Disease with Clinical Data.” Dr. Walunas is an Assistant Professor in the Division or General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics in the Department of Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Human diseases can be challenging to represent in animal models. But what is the alternative? "Real World" clinical data from electronic health records presents an opportunity to develop representations of complex human conditions, provided that the research community understands the strengths and challenges inherent to the data. Developing a pragmatic approach to using electronic health record data is the first step to unlocking its research potential. Data science and informatics professionals who understand this data and how to connect it to primary mechanistic and social science data will be essential to the future of research in this space.