Master’s Graduate Mario Barbé, MD, Brings Critical Health Informatics Capabilities to Clinica Alemana in Chile

Barbé finds future in pairing medicine and data science to respond to health care challenges

Mario Barbé, MD, completed his master’s degree in Health Informatics in Summer 2018. His employer, Clínica Alemana, sponsored his study at UNC Charlotte. Mario returns to his work with the necessary skills needed to advance the health informatics efforts at Clínica Alemana, one of the premier hospitals in Chile. Mario is committed to developing data science methodologies to transform healthcare.

Mario recently returned to Chile where he will build a data driven unit inside the Health Informatics at Clínica Alemana in Santiago. The group will focus on the analysis of the electronic healthcare record data and the development models that will help the clinicians improve the quality of care provided. “Spending this past year studying at UNC Charlotte has been an invaluable experience,” said Mario. “I’ve had the flexibility to develop my own approach which now provides me with the skill set to bring back to Clínica Alemana.”

“Dr. Barbé illustrates the best of what our program offers students. He brings several years of clinical experience into the classroom which serves to ground the technical and theoretical aspects of Health Informatics in real world applications.” said Josh Hertel, director of the Data Science Initiative. “Health Informatics and Analytics at its core is about using data to discover efficiencies and solutions to improve patient outcomes. Mario sees data through the eyes of a doctor treating patients, and translates the insights derived from clinical data in solutions.”

As a part of the program, Barbé completed an internship in which he used data science to solve clinical problems in radiation therapy. His analysis of diagnostic and treatment data will guide clinicians to better target treatment sites and minimize doses to improve outcomes while limiting collateral damage to nearby organs. “Mario is an exemplary student. During his internship, he skillfully combined his physician background with the data science methods that he learned throughout our graduate program. His systematic analysis of predictive models for radiation therapy planning will provide important insights into best strategies for further improving planning and treatment quality,” said Dr. Yaorong Ge, Professor, Professor of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics.