Sophie Wang is a HealthPros Fellow based at OptiMedis and a PhD candidate at the Hamburg Centre for Health Economics. Her role as an analyst at OptiMedis involves optimizing healthcare feedback reports to improve the performance of an integrated healthcare network. This work complements her academic pursuit in examining changes in uptake and utilization of performance reports when behavioral economics is applied.

Sophie has always had a strong interest in how academic research can be applied to solve real problems. During her undergraduate years, she worked in clinical research comparing the efficacy of different dosages of IV Ig on Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, a hematological illness. The results of this study led to changes in treatment guidelines at Vancouver General Hospital and were subsequently published and presented at the American Society of Hematology Conference. This experience led her to pursue a Masters of Public Health, specifically focusing her training on epidemiology and evaluation. This training allowed her to conduct research in a variety of topics of interest, including examining the relationship between food security and social inclusion, interactions between population health and the built environment, trends in antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic utilization, and the role of smoke-free policies on changes in second hand smoke exposure. Through these projects, Sophie was able to cultivate her skills in data analytics (SPSS, R), research communication, and project management.

After her academic training, she was involved in a variety of different healthcare redesign initiatives in BC, including:

• Engaging physicians in health care quality improvement with the Vancouver Physician Staff Association
• Evaluating province-wide patient engagement with the BC Patient Safety and Quality Council
• Informing regional integrated healthcare system planning through community health data visualization with Doctors of BC

These experiences allowed her to recognize the importance of harnessing data insights to drive organizational decision-making and strategic planning in today’s big data economy. Thus, she is very excited to be a part of this network grow with an exceptional community of healthcare professionals!

As a passionate learner, connector and collaborator, Sophie is always excited to learn about new ideas and perspectives and is looking forward to learning more about health care delivery in Europe.