Faculty Directory Listing

Ryan J. Shaw
Tel: (919) 684-9434
Office: 4145 Pearson Building
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Ryan J. Shaw, PhD, RN

Associate Professor

Elizabeth C Clipp Term Chair of Nursing

  • Brief Bio

    Current methods for collecting and disseminating patient information are largely ineffective at improving health. Dr. Shaw identifies and optimizes novel, useful methods of collecting, visualizing, and disseminating healthcare data to (1) better inform our understanding of human disease and (2) improve patient and clinical decision-making.

    Dr. Shaw is a pioneer in mobile health—the collection and dissemination of information using mobile and wireless devices. These technologies afford researchers, clinicians, and patients a rich stream of real-time information about individuals’ biophysical and behavioral health in everyday environments.

    Dr. Shaw works with faculty at Duke’s Schools of Engineering and Medicine to integrate mobile technologies into first-generation care delivery systems. Dr. Shaw was one of the first scientists to demonstrate and publish that patients could feasibly utilize multiple mobile technologies to manage their health. Additionally, he conducted foundational clinical trials to explore how patients and clinicians use mobile health for self-management and care delivery.

    Dr. Shaw was the founder and now Director of the new Duke Health Innovation Lab, a multidisciplinary partnership. He was appointed Faculty Lead of Mobile Technology in Precision Medicine and the Nursing School’s representative to Duke’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. By fostering collaborations across scientific, clinical and technical disciplines, Dr. Shaw actively demonstrates how nursing science can shape the future of health care and improve health outcomes.

    Academic Program Affiliations

    PhD in Nursing Program
    Master of Science in Nursing Program
    Doctor of Nursing Practice Program

    Education

    PhDDuke University
    MS Nursing InformaticsNew York University
    BSNUniversity of Miami

    Research Interests

    Healthcare as we know it is delivered in episodic phases. A patient comes to the clinic, clinicians collect their biophysical and behavioral health data, compare it to the patient’s history, and analyze that data to make informed diagnoses and care recommendations. This structure relies on single data points that are collected in a specific setting that a patient spends very little time in overall. To have a true picture of a patient’s health, the clinician would have access to the biological, behavioral, environmental, social networking, and contextual data of the patient in their everyday lives – every day, every hour, and everywhere. Moreover, this data would be available in “real-time”.

    With the proliferation of mobile devices, notably smartphones and other wearable sensors, the potential to collect this real-time digital health data is now possible. Geographic location is rarely a barrier, and with the near universal access to smartphones we are able to transcend the traditional socioeconomic barriers previously faced. This has the potential to yield new insights into disease processes and enhance our understanding of the longitudinal effects of care delivery, medications, and health behaviors.

    My work explores how data science and care teams will make it possible to use these data to improve health outcomes and care delivery. I discover how to integrate data from these new technologies into electronic health records and leverage predictive analytics to forecast patient needs.