Our Team

We are a team of clinicians, researchers, data scientists and technical staff working to improve healthcare with hospital data.

GEMINI Executive Team

Co-Lead

Co-Lead

Director, Operations & Strategic Partnerships

Team Members

Medical Oncologist

General Internist and Palliative Care Clinician-Scientist

General Paediatrician & Scientist

Senior Scientist

Investigator

Assistant Professor, Faculty Affiliate

General Internist

General Internist

General Internist

General Internist

General Internist

General Internist

Psychiatrist

Co-Lead

Scientific Lead

Co-Lead

Amol Verma

Co-Lead

My role with the GEMINI team:

I am an internal medicine physician and scientist at Unity Health Toronto and the Temerty Professor of AI Research and Education in Medicine at the University of Toronto.

My educational background:

I completed a BSc in Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie, medical school and residency at the University of Toronto, a Masters in Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, a 1-year interdisciplinary fellowship with the Canadian Frailty Network a 2-year research fellowship studying big data and advanced analytics in the Clinician Investigator Program of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and a 1-year fellowship in Artificial Intelligence and Compassion with AMS Healthcare.​

My past experience and accomplishments:

I serve as a Provincial Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement in General Internal Medicine with Ontario Health, the Vice-Chair of the Researcher Council of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, and was a member of the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Health Data Sharing. I received the 2023 Canadian Society of Internal Medicine New Investigator Award, the 2022 Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Early Career Leadership Award and the 2022 Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s early career Trailblazer Award in Population and Public Health Research. 

I feel most inspired when:

I am near the ocean.​

Fahad Razak

Co-Lead

My role with the GEMINI team:

I am a hospital-based general internist at St Michaels Hospital and Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute. I am co-lead of the GEMINI program. I am also the Provincial Co-Lead, Quality Improvement in General Internal Medicine at Ontario Health, and I find this a great fit for my clinical work and research focus. ​

At the University of Toronto, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.  I am a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

My educational background:

My training includes a degree in Engineering Science (Biomedical Engineering), Medical Doctorate, Residency and Fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto. I was the first physician appointed as a David E. Bell Fellow at Harvard University and my post-doctoral training focused on social determinants of health and population health through use of large datasets.

My past experience and accomplishments:

Notable research recognitions at the University of Toronto include the Dean’s Emerging Leader Award, the President’s Impact Award, and being named a Senior Fellow at Massey College. I received the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine’s New Investigator Award and the Graham Farquharson Knowledge Translation Fellowship from the PSI Foundation.  I have received >$65 million in grant funding as Principal Investigator from sources such as CIHR, NSERC, and the Canadian Cancer Society. I have published >100 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 35, >50 as first/senior author), including in high impact journals such as JAMA, the BMJ, PLOS Medicine and PNAS as first/senior author. 

I am  a Canada Research Chair in Data-Informed Health Care Improvement and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. I serve as a Provincial Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement in General Internal Medicine with Ontario Health, and am Vice-President Research at the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine. I am on the advisory board of the BMJ.

I was the Scientific Director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table and co-authored >50 science and policy briefs that shaped the policy, public health and clinical response to the COVID-19 crisis. I am a member of the Federal Expert Panel on Science Advisory and Research convened by the Minister of Health.

I feel most inspired when:

I can see something grow that I have nurtured and cared for. For GEMINI, I feel inspired as I see our team grow stronger and more skilled in striving to achieve the complex and broad goals we have set for ourselves.

Vlad Kushnir

Director, Operations & Strategic Partnerships

Educational background

PhD in Pharmaceutical Science, University of Toronto

MSc in Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto

BSc (Hons) in Biology and Psychology, York University

My past accomplishments

Prior to joining GEMINI, I managed a research program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, aimed at developing and evaluating the effectiveness of brief interventions for addictive disorders and co-morbid mental health issues. In my role, I guided the execution of randomized controlled trials and prospective studies, developed protocols and grants proposals, and managed all data collection and analysis efforts. Some of my key accomplishments include successfully leading a national trial on the real-world effectiveness of nicotine patches which involved over 2,000 participants, acquiring grant funding for problem gambling and tobacco dependence research from national and provincial agencies, and authoring dozens of publications in top-tier scientific journals.​

When I feel most inspired

I have the freedom to explore different ideas and make something my own.

A few of my favourite things

Backcountry canoe camping with my friends and kids

Building something with my kids (i.e. mini catapult, fuel-powered rocket, etc.), essentially anything that has the potential to be launched or explode

Backyard BBQ with friends and family on a sunny summer afternoon

Lawson Eng

Medical Oncologist

University of Toronto

Dr. Lawson Eng, MD, SM, FRCPC is a Medical Oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. He completed his medical school, internal medicine and medical oncology residency at the University of Toronto and completed his fellowship through the Royal College – Clinician Investigator Program where he jointly completed a Master of Science (SM) at the Harvard School of Public Health in epidemiology focusing on population-level data, data science and outcomes research, and his clinical and research fellowship at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. 

His clinical practice focuses on lung, gastrointestinal and head and neck cancers. His research interests are in cancer survivorship and supportive care with a focus on health behaviours (in particular, tobacco control), patient-reported outcomes, real-world population-level data, outcomes research and health services research with a goal towards improving the care of cancer survivors.  He currently holds a Hold’Em for Life Early Career Professorship in Cancer Research and is currently the Ontario Health – Cancer Care Ontario – Smoking Cessation Regional Lead for Toronto Central South (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) where he is responsible for the delivery of smoking cessation across the region and he also serves on the Ontario Health – Cancer Care Ontario – Smoking Cessation Research and Knowledge Translation Committee, and the International Association of the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) – Tobacco Control and Smoking Cessation Committee as the Research Sub-group co-chair. Furthermore, he is involved in the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer – Research Committee, Survivorship Working Group and Disparities Task Force. To date, he has published over 75 manuscripts and has over 170 abstract presentations at international meetings. He has received multiple American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Merit Awards, Novartis Oncology Young Canadian Investigator Awards, an ASCO Young Investigator Award (2020), an IASLC Early Career Award, a MASCC Young Investigator Award (2018), the 2019 Canadian Association of Medical Oncology (CAMO) Fellowship Award and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Publication Prize, CIHR Fellowship Award and CIHR Early Career Researcher Award. His research has been funded by CAMO, ASCO, CIHR and the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute.

Kieran Quinn

General Internist and Palliative Care Clinician-Scientist

Sinai Health

Dr. Kieran Quinn is a General Internist and Palliative Care Clinician-Scientist at Sinai Health at the University of Toronto. He uses advanced analytic methods to improve end-of-life care for people with noncancer illness and the care of people with post COVID-19 condition (long COVID). Dr. Quinn advised the provincial government as a member of the Ontario Palliative Care Network and as Assistant Scientific Director for the Ontario Science Advisory Table. He co-led the establishment of Canada’s national long COVID research network, was an expert member of the National Task Force on post COVID-19 condition and is a co-chair for the development of national clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of long COVID. His early research success includes over 100 publications and more than $29 million dollars in competitive grant funding. He has mentored 14 trainees who have published and won several awards for their work together.

Peter Gill

General Paediatrician & Scientist

Hospital for Sick Children SickKids Research Institute

My role with GEMINI team:

I am a general paediatrician and scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children SickKids Research Institute, an Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, and a Senior Associate at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford. I am Co-Lead of the GEMINI-Pediatrics program.

My educational background:

I completed a BMSc and MD from the University of Alberta, and a DPhil in Primary Health Care and MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. I completed my paediatrics residency at the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto.

My past experience and accomplishments:

I co-founded and am Vice-Chair of the Canadian Pediatric Inpatient Research Network (PIRN – https://www.pirncanada.com/), which is focused on generating research evidence to improve outcomes of hospitalized children in general pediatric settings. PIRN includes hospital sites affiliated with all 17 academic children’s hospitals across Canada and over 10 large community hospitals. In 2023, I received the Canadian Paediatric Society Young Investigator Award and the Paediatric Chairs of Canada Emerging Academic Leader Award. I am also a member of the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine and Hospital Pediatrics Editorial Board.

I feel most inspired when:

When I work with inspirational, passionate, and dedicated people  

Geoffrey Liu

Senior Scientist

University Health Network

Dr. Liu graduated sum laude from the University of Toronto medicine program, followed by residencies at the University of Toronto and a fellowship at the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center in Boston. He was Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School before returning in 2006 to the Ontario Cancer Institute–Princess Margaret Hospital. Dr. Liu’s major research focus is in molecular prognostic factors and pharmacogenomics of lung and esophageal cancer, with additional interest in head and neck, pancreatic, ovarian and testicular cancers, mesothelioma and thymoma. Trained in clinical and molecular epidemiology, he is the principal investigator of over two dozen completed, ongoing and upcoming cancer pharmacogenomic and molecular epidemiologic analyses of cancer observational studies and clinical trials funded by the National Cancer Institute (US), National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group, Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research, Cancer Care Ontario, Doris Duke Foundation and the Lung Cancer Foundation of America. He has research interests in epidemiological outcomes database methods, novel analyses of high dimensionality biologically rich data, pharmacogenomic analyses of conventional and molecularly targeted agents using primary human xenograft models, patient-reported outcomes in pharmacogenomics, and knowledge translation of personalized medicine and pharmacogenomic algorithms into clinical practice. 

Amrit Krishnan

Investigator

Amrit Krishnan is a Technical Team Lead at the Vector Institute. He leads the development of open-source software tools for the responsible development and deployment of Machine Learning (ML) systems for healthcare. Specifically, his team develops tools for:

1. Evaluating and monitoring ML systems to help clinical teams adopt them into their workflows in a safe and transparent way.

2. Researching and developing federated learning systems in healthcare settings.

3. Researching and developing foundation models for clinical time-series data.

He has a master’s degree in Engineering Physics, focusing on robotics and complex adaptive systems.

Elham Dolatabadi

Assistant Professor, Faculty Affiliate

University of Toronto

Elham Dolatabadi is an Assistant Professor at the School of Health Policy and Management in Machine Learning and Health Informatics at York University and a Faculty Affiliate at Vector Institute. Prior to this, she was a Scientist and Health Lead at Vector Institute, where she led various large-scale projects in collaboration with hospitals, government, and private sectors in Ontario and Canada to deliver innovative AI solutions for real-world healthcare problems. Her interdisciplinary research harmonizes innovations in health informatics and machine learning to address complex challenges influencing human health and to reduce health disparities. In particular, her interest revolves around the three core pillars of multimodal learning in health, health equity analysis using causal mechanisms, and ambient intelligence. She is actively involved in various application domains stemming from these pillars, including characterizing Post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) in Canada, improving youth mental health, building an early warning system for mental health crisis, and responsible development and deployment of clinical AI models.

Lauren Lapointe-Shaw

General Internist

University Health Network

Lauren Lapointe-Shaw MDCM PhD is an Assistant Professor and Clinician Scientist in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Staff General Internal Medicine Physician at the University Health Network .

She was previously awarded a CIHR Fellowship Award and CIHR-IHSPR’s Rising Star Award for her work relating to the transition home from hospital. She has expertise in using health administrative data to answer questions relating to the quality of healthcare and the effects of health policy. Her research centers on the organization of and access to physician services and preventing hospital readmissions.

Research Interests:

  • Acute/hospital care
  • Internal medicine
  • Health services research
  • Health policy/reform

Shail Rawal

General Internist

University Health Network

Dr. Shail Rawal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a General Internist at University Health Network. Her research examines the intersection of health equity and quality improvement.

Her recent work centres on the quality of care received by patients whose primary language is not English and the use of sociodemographic data and patient-reported outcomes to improve care.

Research Interests:

  • General internist and clinician in quality and innovation at University Health Network
  • Intersection of health equity and quality improvement
  • Characterizing the uses of patient-level sociodemographic data to improve patient care
  • Improving the quality of care received by patients with limited English proficiency.
  • Quality and safety of care in general internal medicine

Jessica Liu

General Internist

University Health Network

Dr. Jessica Liu is an Internal Medicine Physician at the University Health Network (UHN) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, where she is a Clinician Investigator with a focus on healthcare quality improvement and innovation.In addition to her clinical practice, she has completed a research fellowship in quality improvement and patient safety with the Toronto division of the United States Veteran Affairs Quality Scholars Program (VAQS), which began as a joint collaboration between the U.S. Veterans Health Administration and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. As of June 2016, she is also a research fellow with the Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WHIV).As part of a Mount Sinai Hospital research fellowship in quality and innovation, Dr. Liu has also worked as an Associate in the Healthcare Consulting Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Toronto, where she applied her medical and clinical experience to clients in the healthcare sector.Dr. Liu’s research focuses on patient safety and quality of care, and optimizing clinical processes and outcomes. Specifically, her recent research and publications have focused on pharmaceutical industry-physician conflicts of interest, online physician ratings and the patient experience; quality of care of hospitalized patients; and rates and characteristics of physician disciplinary action by provincial regulatory colleges.Following her medical education at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Dr. Liu completed her clinical fellowship in Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto. Prior to this she obtained a research-based Masters of Science (Anatomy and Cell Biology) from UWO and acted as an Oncology Research Associate for Cytochroma Inc. (now OPKO Health), a private sector biotechnology firm.

Thomas Macmillan

General Internist

University Health Network

Tom MacMillan is Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto and Clinician in Quality and Innovation in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Toronto Western Hospital, UHN.  He received his MD from Queen’s University and his Internal Medicine residency and General nternal Medicine fellowship training from the University of Toronto.  He obtained a Masters of Science in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety from the University of Toronto.

Dr. MacMillan’s academic interests include resource stewardship, deprescribing, and developing new models of GIM ambulatory care.  In 2016, Dr. MacMillan lead the implementation of a new program of GIM ambulatory clinics at TWH including a rapid referral clinic to reduce admissions from the emergency department, a post-discharge clinic to prevent readmissions to the GIM wards, and a hypertension clinic.  Dr. MacMillan is currently the lead for Quality Improvement and Ambulatory Care at the HoPingKong Centre for Excellence in Education and Practice at TWH.

Janice Kwan

General Internist

Sinai Health

Dr. Janice Kwan practices general internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She completed her undergraduate, medical, and residency training all at the University of Toronto.

She was Chief Medical Resident and a fellow with the Veterans Affairs Quality Scholars program in her final year of postgraduate medical training. She went on to earn a Master of Public Health in health policy and management at Harvard University. She was awarded a research fellowship in diagnostic medicine with the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine.

Dr. Kwan’s research focuses broadly on diagnostic error, a relatively neglected topic in patient safety and quality improvement until recent years. In addition, her areas of interest include the study of missed test results, quality of care in general internal medicine, clinical decision support systems, medication reconciliation, and evidence synthesis. Her work has appeared in Annals of Internal Medicine and British Medical Journal.

Terence Tang

General Internist

Trillium Health Partners

Terence Tang is a general internist at Trillium Health Partners and a clinician scientist at Institute for Better Health. His research focuses on using data to improve care, and in designing, implementing, and evaluating digital health solutions to improve care and experiences for patients and providers.

Kathleen Sheehan

Psychiatrist

University Health Network

Dr. Kathleen Sheehan is a staff psychiatrist with the medical psychiatry program at the Centre for Mental Health-University Health Network. She is the principal investigator on several research projects and has been awarded grants from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the University of Toronto.

Dr. Sheehan is a graduate of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and completed her psychiatry residency at the University of Toronto. Dr. Sheehan completed her B.Sc. in Neuroscience at the University of St. Andrews and subsequently obtained both her Masters in Neuroscience and Doctorate in Social Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.

Her clinical interests are in the fields of consultation-liaison psychiatry and psychotherapy. Her research focuses on quality of health care for individuals with co-occurring physical and mental illnesses, especially in the areas of stroke and delirium, as well as issues at the intersection of ethics, law and mental health care

Surain Roberts

Scientific Lead

Educational background

I completed my PhD at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and my bachelors in Biological Sciences at The University of Chicago.

My past accomplishments

I am a health outcomes researcher and applied biostatistician. My research leverages data from large health networks to learn about differences in quality of inpatient care and inform health system decisions, with a focus on observational studies, prediction tools, and hospital profiling. I am the Scientific Lead of GEMINI and oversee GEMINI’s research activities, providing methodological direction across a wide range of clinical domains. Additionally, I act as the methods lead for the General Medicine Quality Improvement Network (GeMQIN), a quality improvement partnership between GEMINI and Ontario Health that develops audit & feedback reports delivered to physicians and hospitals annually.

I am an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining GEMINI in 2021, I co-led the creation of the Canadian Network for Autoimmune Liver disease (CaNAL). CaNAL is a pan-Canadian registry collecting both retrospective and prospective long-term follow-up of individual patient data. After my bachelors, I spent a year teaching, mentoring, and evaluating twelve students in a for-credit 9th grade algebra class in south Chicago.

When I feel most inspired

When I’m surrounded by people who are passionate about what they do.

A few of my favourite things

Playing 30-second online bullet chess (I can click faster than I can think)

Discovering new and interesting hot sauces