Digital health expert discusses importance of data in improving public health

Yale School of Public Health recently welcomed to campus Dr. Abdul R. Shaikh, PhD, Global Leader for Population Health for Amazon Web Services (AWS). Dr. Shaik discussed his work in digital health and data in health care with Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, as part of the Dean’s Leaders in Public Health speaker series.

In his current position, Dr. Shaikh is responsible for the global go-to-market strategy applying leading technologies such as generative AI and machine learning, remote patient monitoring, and cloud computing for clinical and public health.

With more than 20 years of experience as a public health practitioner, he presented students with valuable insight into helping health care professionals and policymakers optimize data for more equitable and efficient care.

Dr. Shaikh sat down with Dean Ranney on December 4 in the Winslow Auditorium as the final Leaders in Public Health speaker for 2024. While Dr. Shaikh is known for his role as a leader in public health today, his early career had more humble beginnings in lab work as a health educator and health services researcher at his alma mater, the University of Toronto.

“I think I’m the poster child for ‘you never know where you’re going to end up,’” said Dr. Shaikh.

An interest in technology—developed from a love of video games—led him to get involved in the Canadian government’s first online portal for providing accurate and reliable health information. This foundational experience gave him the building blocks to join Westat in Washington, D.C., where he became immersed in the U.S. health care system. Westat is an employee-owned company that seeks to improve people’s lives by delivering exceptional data-driven research and technical assistance to advance health, education, and social and economic opportunity.

From there, Dr. Shaikh gained extensive training at the University of Michigan and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he served as a project officer. His career in public health was following a traditional roadmap until his interest in data-driven innovation led him to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he worked closely with government and nonprofit organizations to enhance their community engagement.

As his career advanced, Dr. Shaikh joined Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing business of Amazon. His team’s mission is to help customers advance access and delivery of person-centered care to improve outcomes at a lower cost by accelerating the digitization and use of healthcare data. Other Amazon businesses separate from the cloud that address healthcare priorities include Amazon Health and Amazon Pharmacy.

As AWS’ Global Leader for Population Health, Dr. Shaikh has helped RUSH University System for Health to develop the Health Equity Care & Analytics Platform (HECAP). This platform transforms, aggregates, and harmonizes data from different sources to capture a clearer picture of the clinical and social factors influencing patient health. HECAP uses advanced analytics to provide actionable insights for patients and providers, which RUSH is using to enhance care outcomes and reduce health inequities in Chicago’s West Side.

“That was a pretty powerful use of the cloud: to bring data together operationally for surge response,” Dr. Shaikh said.

He also emphasized the use of the cloud for machine learning pipelines to improve risk prediction models and scale platforms across multi-institutional health systems while retaining confidentiality and improving equitability. He is confident in the problem-solving capabilities of cloud computing technologies to improve health care.

Dr. Shaikh challenged students to build a tool set of expertise around data and consider the cloud in their professional approaches in analytics. Public health needs scalable solutions, he said.

Dr. Shaikh’s professional activities include serving on the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) Social Determinants of Health Committee, the AWS Health Equity Initiative Review Committee, and the National Academy of Medicine’s Digital Health Action Collaborative. His work has been featured in national outlets such as Becker’s Hospital Review, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a regular speaker at industry, government, and scientific meetings on AI, cloud computing, social determinants of health, and digital health innovation.

A full recording of Dr. Shaikh’s talk is available on the YSPH YouTube page.