Katherine Kim, MPH, MBA 

Biography

Katherine Kim is Professor in Residence at San Francisco State University, Health Equity Institute.  Her research focuses on the application of mobile health and health information exchange technologies to health promotion and healthcare delivery systems, including the business model and policy implications.  She is currently principal investigator on iN Touch: mobile platforms for observations of daily living in youth with obesity and depression and co-investigator on SCANNER:  SCAlable National Network for Effectiveness Research.

She has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry with hospitals and medical groups, as an entrepreneur--CEO of a venture-funded startup (one of only 2% of venture funded startups led by women nationally), leader of a business incubator, and Founder and President of Kim Consultants-and in software product development with Oracle.  Ms. Kim received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Harvard, her MPH and MBA from UC Berkeley, and is currently pursuing a PhD in health informatics from UC Davis, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Current Projects

mHealth-enabled Youth Initiatives
Funded by United States Department of Agriculture 

• Enhancing Tribal Health and Food Security in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California Through a Regional Food Security System is a multidisciplinary partnership from agronomy, biology, social science, public health, informatics and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) using an action research approach. The long-term goal is to develop a sustainable regional food system in the Klamath Basin that results in healthy communities, healthy ecosystems and healthy economies among the Karuk, Yurok and Klamath Indian Tribes and becomes a model for other tribal and rural communities. One part of meeting this goal is researching and understanding the determinants of sustainable healthy food systems. The team at SFSU will contribute to this by leading two youth initiatives working with the Karuk Youth Leadership Council (YLC) to give youth an opportunity to create solutions for healthier communities. With guidance from the team at SFSU, the Karuk YLC will design and implement two mobile health technology-enabled projects: 1) Youth led community food and health assessment and 2) Youth led health/adventure walk to encourage physical exercise and nutrition education.

iN Touch: Mobile Platforms for ODLs in Youth with Obesity and Depression
Funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 

• Recording observations of daily living (ODLs) has been associated with increased patient self-management of illness and conditions. This study applies this concept to a low-income, overweight or obese youth population to see if recording ODLs might be associated with achievement of health goals. The study will begin to understand the efficacy of mobile technology use in the health care setting and the experiences of patients, health coaches and clinical care providers when integrating mobile technology into a patient's care. In this intervention, health coaching helps individuals learn to enter and then interpret information about themselves, using a mobile platform, and participate in shared decision making surrounding the action plans that they choose to take. The level of detail that they achieve about their behavior when frequently and accurately recording ODLs could help patients and care teams identify patterns of behavior, suggest clearer paths toward effective management than if the patient were simply recalling information during bi-weekly or monthly visits, and capture the success factors for and barriers to adherence to treatment and action plans. Use of mobile devices that are available throughout the day allows for this convenient and frequent data collection. This research can potentially 1) improve health benefits, 2) demonstrate feasibility of integrating of patient data into electronic health records, 3) generate knowledge about the efficacy of electronic ODL reports for health care providers.

SCANNER - Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research
Funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) 

• Traditional approaches to data sharing have consistently undermined the ability of researchers and clinicians to access, aggregate, and meaningfully analyze patient records at the point of care. The SCAlable National Network for Effectiveness Research (SCANNER) will overcome these obstacles by developing a scalable distributed network infrastructure, as well as methodologies, to enable near real-time comparative effectiveness research and prospective analysis of data collected from clinical databases
• The San Francisco State University (SFSU) research team will guide the development of the SCANNER electronic health infrastructure. They will examine and document preferences and concerns regarding the collection and uses of electronic health information by conducting focus groups and in-depth interviews with patients and users at each SCANNER network site: Partners Healthcare System, the Tennessee Valley Veteran's Healthcare System, and the UCSD Medical Center/San Diego Pharmacist Resource and Research Network (SDPharmNet^TM). In addition, the SFSU research team will convene state and national stakeholder groups through partnerships with the California Health and Human Services-Office of Health Information Integrity, California eHealth Collaborative, and the National eHealth Collaborative. These activities will develop a SCANNER electronic health infrastructure that accounts for the perspectives of patients, consumers, and users and maintains sufficient flexibility and scalability across existing health system networks that are both diverse and large.

Business Models for Community Health Information Exchange
Funded by Blue Shield of California Foundation 

• In a realm where Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are mainly operated through state, federal, and independent grant funding, there is widespread interest in whether there are sustainable business models for the general HIE community and its stakeholders. This project involved in depth interviews and of leaders of operational California HIEs to assess the progress and plans for achieve sustainable business models for HIEs.

• The EDM Forum focuses on the shared scientific, organizational, clinical, technical, and data governance issues related to implementing CER with prospective electronic clinical data. Kathy and team received a grant to write a commissioned paper that leverages work done for SCANNER. The papers will be presented on March 15, 2012 at the EDM Forum Stakeholder Symposium. http://www.academyhealth.org/Programs/content.cfm?ItemNumber=5666