People

“I’ve been able to connect with people from all corners of the University working in healthcare and related fields.”

A Jay Holmgren (he/him) hadn’t yet developed a strong interest in health policy when he graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in History in 2011. But when his father was diagnosed with cancer in 2014, A Jay found himself struggling to manage a mountain of medical records as he assisted with his father’s care. “I had this gigantic binder of test results that I would have to fax to different specialists and providers,” he explains. “I thought to myself, ‘Why do I still have this physical folder? Why don’t we have better systems for doing this?’”

These questions spurred A Jay to earn a Master of Health Informatics degree from his alma mater in 2017. Pursuing a PhD in Health Policy Management at Harvard was a logical next step for his research interests. “Studying as part of a joint program with HBS has allowed me to stay connected to the world of health policy and medicine while gaining expertise in management, which hadn’t factored into my previous graduate-level work,” he says. “When it comes to an industry as complex as healthcare, the management of the implementation of systems is just as important as the content of the systems themselves.”

While A Jay’s home base has always been HBS, he has also been able to pursue interdisciplinary work in collaboration with faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as at HBS. “No other institution but HBS could have given me the same level of access to resources that span business, health policy, and medicine,” he says. “I’ve been able to connect with people from all corners of the University working in healthcare and related fields.”

Research

A Jay has worked closely with Dr. David Bates, chief of general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, on a series of papers examining the efficacy of hospital IT systems at flagging and preventing adverse drug events. He credits the diverse expertise of his fellow doctoral students with helping him expand and enrich his research pursuits. “I’ve brought ideas from industries outside of healthcare into my work, which has helped me refine my scholarly view and allowed me to see my research interests with new eyes.”