Treating patients at the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center led Ken Carson, MD, PhD, to investigate questions about racial disparities in treatment of patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

He still sees patients once a week, and his success as a researcher has led him to Flatiron Health, where he serves as senior medical director and focuses on real-world evidence generation.

1:15 – On his ACS-funded research on “racial disparities in outcomes among patients who have a common form of lymphoma”

4:50 – On transitioning to doing big data work and his work at Flatiron Health – “The ultimate objective is having every patient’s experience help inform the next patient’s experience.”

11:10 – Advice for his younger self – “You don’t have to follow the traditional academic mold”

13:20 – What he’s most excited about – “As we better understand how to capture adverse events and treatment toxicities with big data, we’ll be able to explore that further with the ultimate goal of improving—not just response, progression-free survival, and overall survival—but also patient quality of life during treatment.”