EP 03: Mara Alexeev on Messy Clinical Data, the Limit of EHRs, and the Future of Clinical Informatics

In this episode, we chat with Mara Alexeev, a pediatrician-turned-clinical informaticist with a knack for turning medical chaos into clean, usable data. We talk EHR chaos, learning R on maternity leave, and why smelling liver failure is a real diagnostic skill.

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Meet Mara

(04:00) Becoming chief after attending

(06:00) The broken ritual of rounding

(09:00) Fixing cancer workflows with templates

(12:00) Building rogue order sets at Kaiser

(16:00) Learning R during maternity leave

(20:00) "I am the data process"

(24:00) When a black box warning hits

(30:00) Why EHR ≠ the patient

(33:00) Diagnosing disease by smell

(40:00) Over-measuring what doesn’t matter

(46:00) The future: GLP-1s & off-the-shelf care

(52:00) The dirty secrets of health data

(56:00) Mara’s dream: Data Talk for real-world messes

🔗Links & Resources:

🔔 Subscribe For deep dives and guest interviews about healthcare data, AI, and the future of health tech.

🎙️ About High Dimensional Health Data (HD²) HD² is the podcast for people building healthcare's data and AI future. Hosted by Aaron and Phil, HD² explores the intersection of healthcare, data, and AI, and focuses on conversations with builders and practitioners.

Hosts

Phil Ballentine - Sr Director, Data Engineering at Atropos Health

🔗⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-ballentine/

Aaron Neiderhiser - Co-Founder and CEO at Tuva Health

🔗⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronneiderhiser/⁠

Guests

Mara Alexeev - ​​Clinical Informatician and Pediatrician

🔗https://www.linkedin.com/in/maraalexeev/

Interested in working together or coming on the podcast as a guest? Email us at ⁠[email protected]

In this episode, we chat with Vera M., a cancer researcher-turned-chief scientific officer-turned-biotech founder. We dive into what makes healthcare data “good,” the challenges of connecting siloed clinical trial data to the real world, and the evolving infrastructure powering data-driven medicine. Vera shares her journey from the lab to consulting to startups, and we explore the current and future state of real-world data, patient matching, and tokenization.

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Meet our first guest: Vera Mucaj 

(01:00) From cancer research to Datavent  

(03:00) Why consulting became the next step  

(05:00) Startup life

(06:00) Linking trials to real-world data  

(09:00) The problem with siloed trial data  

(11:00) What happens after a trial ends?  

(15:00) Are we underusing trial data?  

(17:00) The evolution of informed consent  

(20:00) Ethics vs access  

(26:00) Real-world data is still early  

(29:00) Observational limits & FDA guidance  

(32:00) Can RWD replicate trial results?  

(34:00) Data context is everything  

(36:00) Could consumer data help healthcare?  

(39:00) Why data decisions take so long  

(44:00) Product tip: No one wants your dashboard  

(47:00) Vera’s Nature paper on patient matching  

(51:00) The penny-drop moment for linkage  

(52:00) What Vera’s building next  

(55:00) Advice for pivoting PhDs  

(57:00) Wrap-up and reflections

🔗Links & Resources:

• Vera’s Nature article on patient matching

• Flex Capital

• Datavent

• FDA’s guidance on real-world evidence

  
  

🔔 Subscribe For deep dives and guest interviews about healthcare data, AI, and the future of health tech.

🎙️ About High Dimensional Health Data (HD²) HD² is the podcast for people building healthcare's data and AI future. Hosted by Aaron and Phil, HD² explores the intersection of healthcare, data, and AI, and focuses on conversations with builders and practitioners.

Hosts

Phil Ballentine – Sr Director, Data Engineering at Atropos Health

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-ballentine/

Aaron Neiderhiser – Co-Founder and CEO at Tuva Health

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronneiderhiser/

Guests

Vera Mucaj – Venture Partner at Flex Capital & Former Chief Scientific Officer at Datavent

 🔗https://www.linkedin.com/in/veramucaj/
Interested in working together or coming on the podcast as a guest? Email us at [email protected]

In our pilot episode, we dive into how large language models are being used to clean up messy healthcare data—plus what that means for the future of clinical workflows. Phil shares details on a tool he built and evaluated at Atropos Health to map medication descriptions to RxNorm, and we unpack where AI is actually working in healthcare data (and where it's not working quite yet).

(00:00) Enter: The Phantom Menace

(00:28) How AI is reshaping health data

(01:04) The messiness of strings in clinical data

(03:11) The chaos of terminology in healthcare

(04:13) Using UMLS to find structure

(05:53) AI + RAG reaching 99.7% accuracy in structuring messy text?

(09:19) Reimagining how data gets created

(18:38) Will LLMs kill traditional clinical NLP?

(24:57) SQL: annoyingly unbeatable (for now)

(27:49) Where the health tech money’s going

(29:12) RAG explained… kind of

(39:21) What happens next? Let’s speculate

🔔 Subscribe for deep dives and guest interviews about healthcare data, AI, and the future of health tech. 

🎙️ About High Dimensional Health Data (HD²):

HD² is the podcast for people building healthcare's data and AI future. Hosted by Aaron and Phil, HD² explores the intersection of healthcare, data, and AI, and focuses on conversations with builders and practitioners.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@highdimensionalhealthdata

Socials:

Phil Ballentine, Sr Director, Data Engineering at Atropos Health : https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-ballentine/

Aaron Neiderhiser, Co-Founder and CEO at Tuva Health: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronneiderhiser/

Interested in working together or coming on the podcast as a guest? Email us at [email protected].