Spotlight on Courtney Reamer

Courtney Reamer, MD, is a Department of Pathology Fellow specializing in clinical informatics. She works with David Liebovitz, MD, Co-director of I.AIM's Center for Medical Education in Digital Healthcare and Data Science. Courtney studied systems engineering in college and did several healthcare systems projects during her undergraduate years, which initially sparked her interest in clinical informatics. Courtney came to Northwestern for medical school and stayed in Chicago to complete an internal medicine residency. Now she has returned to Northwestern for fellowship.

What features of the Clinical Informatics Fellowship appeal to you?
I was really interested in being able to improve my understanding of the informatics field in medicine and being able to devote time to projects and learning. I was also interested in being able to work on a breadth of projects including more clinical operational ones and more research focused ones.

What factors interested you to work with I.AIM?
There is so much data and information generated in healthcare, and I am very interested in using healthcare data in a thoughtful way to help advance medicine and patient care.

What projects are you currently working on?
Some exciting projects I'm currently working on include using a phenotype algorithm to identify patients with Parkinson's disease and researching medical bias in large language models.

Is there something you've worked on that makes you especially proud?
I am very proud of my work with Dr. Liebovitz on building an educational web application with modules leveraging large language models tailored for neurologists, with the goal of demonstrating how large language models can be used in clinical practice. We built modules helping with patient communication, insurance prior authorizations, interview practice, bias detection, capturing data from notes, and neurology focused questions. I recently presented this work at the American Academy of Neurology conference in Denver.

Do you have plans for post Fellowship?
Yes. I hope to get a clinical job and be able to spend some of my time doing clinical informatics. I love how the field of clinical informatics is constantly changing and growing. During my fellowship I've enjoyed learning about many areas of clinical informatics, including clinical decision support, artificial intelligence, interoperability, and the regulatory landscape around informatics.

What advice would you give to a student wanting to get into this field of study?
It's really helpful to understand how both healthcare works and how computer science works. I think sometimes people are so siloed that it's hard to create and implement projects that positively effect medicine and patient care.

Who inspires you?
The amazing colleagues and patients I've worked with during medical school, residency, and fellowship!