Our Team
Health Economics
Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research
Meet the Team
Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS
Associate Director, Section Head
Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS serves as the Section Head of Health Economics and the Associate Director of the Smith Center. At BIDMC, he is the Director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit. He is a general cardiologist and health economist who uses real-world data and mathematical modeling to examine the clinical and economic effects of diagnostic tests, new therapies, and public health measures on the cardiovascular health of the population. Dr. Kazi is interested in understanding how such interventions affect different sections of society, particularly the most vulnerable populations in the U.S. and overseas. He earned his MD from the University of Mumbai, his MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his MS from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Natalie Wheeler, BA
Program Administrator
Natalie Wheeler is the Health Economic Section Program Administrator. She assists the team by managing new and ongoing projects and working with different administrative groups throughout the BIDMC network. Natalie received her degree from Boston University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and has been working in research in Boston ever since.
Nicolas Isaza, MD
Cardiology Fellow
Nicolas was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. He completed medical school at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in his hometown. After graduation he spent a year as a research fellow in cardiovascular imaging at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He then moved to Boston for Internal Medicine Residency and Cardiology Fellowship. He will be a T32 and Electrophysiology Fellow working in the Health Economic section at the Smith Center. His work will focus on the role of novel anti-obesity medications in the prevention of atrial fibrillation and their resulting economic impact. Outside of the work he enjoys traveling with his wife, as well as watching soccer and Formula 1.
Mohammed Essa, MD
Research Fellow
Mo Essa completed his internal medicine residency at Mount Auburn Hospital in 2022. He currently serves as a research fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Kazi. In parallel, he is pursuing a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has developed a growing interest in applying causal inference methods to observational data.
Yang Song, MSc
Biostatistical Director
Yang Song, MSc, is the Biostatistical Manager at the Smith Center. He has 7 years of work experience using SAS and R for statistical research and programming, and he has supported more than 30 publications in clinical trials and research proposals in the field of cardiovascular health. Yang’s comprehensive statistical methods knowledge and hands-on programming skills facilitate his handling of a range of data sources, including new drug and medical device clinical trials, NCDR Registries, CMS Medicare Claims, and raw EHR data. As a current BU PhD student, his research interests include clinical trial designs and observational studies.
Lichen Liang, PhD
Lead Biostatistician
Lichen Liang, PhD, is the Lead Biostatistician at the Smith Center. He has over seven years of experience in the field of healthcare research and analytics. He was a Data Scientist at Tufts Medical Center and a Research Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. His focus has been on developing statistical methodologies for the analysis of large-scale medical datasets, encompassing imaging data, electronic health records, and extensive claims data.
Ivy Shi, MD
Resident at BIDMC
Ivy grew up in Northeast Ohio, with an early interest in math and biology. She completed degrees in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics at the University of Pittsburgh, before moving to Boston for medical school in the HST program at Harvard Medical School, where she also worked in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. She is now a 2nd year internal medicine resident at BIDMC passionate about outcomes research at the Smith Center, with plans to pursue a cardiology fellowship.
Sergio Da Rosa Decker, MD
Research Fellow
Sérgio is a researcher and attending physician from the Moinhos de Vento Hospital in Brazil. He obtained his MD from the Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil) in 2019 and M.Sc. (Cardiovascular Sciences) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) in 2022. His clinical training was in internal medicine and hospital medicine, and he has experience in critical (Emergency-ICU) and post-critical care. Currently, Sérgio is a Ph.D. candidate in Health Economics applied to Cardiovascular Sciences and he is a Harvard Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Smith Center. His research interest is to address important and timely research questions to equitably improve outcomes for those living with chronic conditions (especially cardiovascular conditions) and for those recovering from a severe acute event. His work can be divided in three key objectives: 1) examining socioeconomic barriers to access cutting-edge treatments, including costs; 2) leveraging several large linked databases to evaluate long-term risks and the comparative effectiveness of treatment strategies; 3) using information from the first two aims to project the lifetime cost and health gain of clinical interventions.
Kosuke Inoue, MD, PhD
Visiting Scientist
Kosuke Inoue, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Social Epidemiology at Kyoto University, Japan. Since July 2024, he has been working as a visiting scientist at the Smith Center and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He obtained his MD from the University of Tokyo in 2013 and Ph.D. (Epidemiology) from UCLA in 2021 after clinical training as an endocrinologist. His research interest is the application of causal inference methods and machine learning in chronic disease epidemiology. More recently, his research has focused on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects to establish best clinical practice and patient care in future precision medicine and public health. Website: https://endoepi.net/