Author: Department of Surgery

Please join us in welcoming Chris Gibbons, PhD, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery.

Chris Gibbons, PhD
Co-Director, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham Health

Chris Gibbons, PhD, received his doctorate from University of Liverpool and Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery.  He conducted postdoctoral research at University of Manchester before developing his independent research career at University of Cambridge. At the University of Cambridge, Dr. Gibbons was Director of Health Assessment and Innovation at the Psychometrics Centre (Judge Business School) and NIHR Career Development Fellow at The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute (School of Clinical Medicine).

His research is focused on the development and application of novel techniques for collection, analysis and feedback of patient-reported data. These techniques have included computerized adaptive testing, tailored feedback, predictive analytics, machine learning and natural language processing. Dr. Gibbons was awarded the Young Investigator Award by the International Society for Quality of Life Research for presentation of his work developing a new method to assess the validity of computerized adaptive tests during live administration.

At the Psychometrics Centre, Dr. Gibbons led projects focused on psychometrics, big data and machine learning. One industry-sponsored project called ‘Predictive World’ led to the development of an application which combined predictive algorithms with 2.5 billion publically available data points to create interactive visualizations of health and social outcomes. The application was viewed by over a million people in the first two weeks of release and subsequently won multiple international design awards including the D&AD Graphite Pencil for “stand-out work, beautifully executed with an original and inspiring idea at its core”.

His research has been generously supported by grants from National Institute of Health Research (UK), the Economic and Social Research Fund (UK), Marie Curie Cancer Charity (UK), the Motor Neurone Disease Association (UK) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DE).

Dr. Gibbons is a sought-after international speaker on patient-reported data and has been invited to deliver keynotes, plenaries and technical workshops in ten countries. He currently serves as an editorial board member for Journal of Medical Internet Research was selected to be member of an international cohort of Future Leaders in Health Data Science by the Farr Institute (UK).

Please join us in welcoming Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery and new Division Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health.

 

 

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC
Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Brigham Health
Director, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham Health
Member of the Faculty, Harvard Medical School

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, completed her medical degree at the Cumming School of Medicine (University of Calgary) in Canada and master of public health at Johns Hopkins University. She completed a general surgery residency at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and a plastic surgery residency at McGill University in Montreal, followed by a plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Dr. Pusic was most recently an attending plastic surgeon at MSKCC and a professor of surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, NY.

Dr. Pusic is an internationally-renowned innovator and leader in the area of patient-reported outcomes and surgical experience. This is increasingly important in the current health care environment of measuring quality, assessing value and ultimately, influencing how health care is funded. Dr. Pusic will lead the newly formed Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center at Brigham Health. The scope of the PROVE Center will be focused on patient-reported outcomes, patient experience and value-based surgery in surgical patients throughout Brigham Health.

Dr. Pusic’s research focuses on the measurement of quality of life and patient satisfaction in surgery. Dual training in epidemiology and surgery has enabled her to lead a team of experts in psychometrics, quality of life and social science methods to develop, validate and use new quantitative measures to assess patient outcomes. The patient-reported outcomes instrument she developed for breast surgery, the BREAST-Q, has been widely adopted for research and clinical care and serves as the basis for development of other outcome measures in surgery.

Throughout her career, Dr. Pusic has been involved in research studies that seek to better understand the patient perspective on surgical outcomes and experiences. She is principal investigator of a study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that examines how electronic patient-reporting of symptoms may improve surgical care. Altogether, she has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $10 million in federal research grants.

Dr. Pusic has authored over 200 scientific articles and book chapters and has mentored more than 24 surgeons during various stages of their academic careers. In 2017, she was awarded the Research Achievement Award from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons/Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Pusic is vice-president of WomenforWomen Reconstructive Surgery and regularly leads surgical camps to provide reconstructive surgery for injured women and girls in the developing world. She is a past board member of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) and was recently elected president-elect of the Plastic Surgery Foundation.