As humans are social creatures, the way in which we connect to one another is important, especially to our health. This is even true in the hospital, a setting we often think of as individualistic, as our response to medicine is based mostly on our doctor and our treatment. However, I have shown that this is not always the case. Most notably, I showed that in the chemotherapy ward, being around <anyone for a significant amount of time is associated with better outcomes. This type of finding would be difficult without using EMR data, as the surveys or ethnographic observation required would be immense. Moving forward, I intend to study these kinds of phenomena in other settings (such as the dialysis ward), and study these effects prospecitively, ideally in a randomized clinical trial.
Lienert J, Marcum CS, Finney J, Reed-Tsochas F, and Koehly L. 2017. Social influence on 5-year survival in chemotherapy co-presence network. Network Science 5(3), 308-327.
Rewley J & Aysola J. 2020. Social network characteristics predict smoking in a primary care practice. Upcoming oral presentation at APHA 2020.