All Access Healthcare - Innovation Showcase

Sandra Bossi is the Director of Care Delivery at the HSS Innovation Institute. In this role, she leads innovation initiatives that leverage innovative technologies to improve healthcare access and delivery. These technologies range from digital health to various applications of machine learning and AI in medical diagnosis and process improvement, data analytics and prediction tools as well as motion assessment technologies and next generation wearables for rehab monitoring and performance training. In that capacity, she manages multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, data scientists, computer vision and biomechanical engineers, researchers to bring these projects to fruition.

She has completed MIT’s professional education program “Machine Learning: From Data to Decisions” with the goal to enhance my understanding of ML applications in healthcare, to be able to build more efficient teams to support these initiatives, and make better data driven decisions.

Sandra’s 15 years of client management and corporate partnership development experience span several international industries from entertainment and art to advisory and private equity investment. Prior to joining HSS, Sandra co-founded a film production company in France with major studio and TV network transactions, managed Visitor Services at MoMA, and advised public and private companies on global investment opportunities and strategic partnering in energy, security and mobile communications.

Sandra earned an M.A. in Communication Management from USC Annenberg and an M.A. in Literature from Université Paris Diderot, with a graduate research fellowship from Duke University. She is fluent in English, French, Russian, Croatian and Serbian.

Dr. Soares is a surgical oncologist with specialty training in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. He focuses on cancerous and noncancerous diseases of the liver, gallbladder, bile ducts, and pancreas as well as cancer that has spread to the liver.

He highly values taking care of patients during a time of great uncertainty and need. As a surgeon, I am committed to helping my patients and their families understand exactly what is going on and their options for care. From the first visit, his team develops a partnership with patients. They aim to get through the challenges of their disease in the most efficient, safe, and appropriate way possible.

Dr. Soares and his colleagues are working to develop ways to reduce stress and ease recovery of patients after surgery.  He uses minimally invasive techniques including both robotic and laparoscopic surgery to treat many pancreas, liver, and gallbladder tumors. He also utilizes heat and electricity to kill tumors through an approach called image-guided ablation.

Dr. Soares is also actively involved in research into treatment strategies that use the body’s immune system (immunotherapy) to fight tumors of the pancreas, liver, bile ducts, and gallbladder. As part of a large, collaborative research team here at MSK, he directs exciting clinical trials, testing new immunotherapies and combinations for the treatment of pancreatic and liver tumors. Additionally, he studies precancerous conditions of the pancreas to better understand how to treat these cysts and when to surgically remove them to avoid the development of cancer.

His parents immigrated to the United States from Portugal. He was born in Massachusetts and went to both college and medical school there. He spent eight years in general surgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore prior to moving to New York City. Outside of the office, he enjoys spending time with my wife and children.

Jamie Hirsch is a physician in the Division of Kidney Diseases and Hypertension, a faculty in the Institute of Health System Science, and the senior director of the Data Science and Predictive Analytics team at Northwell Health. Dr. Hirsch received his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency, nephrology fellowship, and post-doctoral research fellowship in biomedical informatics, all at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. At Northwell, he leads research and implementation of clinical informatics, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence for clinical quality and operational improvements.

Tamim Nazif, MD is the Director of Clinical Services for the Columbia Structural Heart & Valve Center, Director of Clinical Research for Columbia Interventional Cardiovascular Care and an assistant professor in medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Dr. Nazif specializes in interventional cardiology and the treatment of heart valve disease.

Dr. Nazif attended Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, did his residency at University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine, San Francisco, CA, and his fellowship in interventional cardiology and Structural Heart Disease at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.