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Lee Schwamm, MD

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About

Titles

Associate Dean, Digital Strategy & Transformation, Office of the Dean, YSM; Professor in Biomedical Informatics & Data Sciences, YSM; Professor of Neurology, YSM; Senior Vice President & Chief Digital Health Officer, YNHHS

Biography

Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, MD is Associate Dean for Digital Strategy and Transformation for Yale School of Medicine, and Senior Vice President + Chief Digital Health Officer for Yale New Haven Health System. In this role, he is leading the development of a new digital health strategy for the school and the health system, and serves as an influential physician leader and an agent of change to catalyze the equitable adoption of virtual care and digital enablement throughout the enterprise.

Before joining Yale, Dr. Schwamm spent 3 decades of service at the Mass General Brigham Health System in academic and administrative leadership roles. He was the inaugural C. Miller Fisher Chair in Vascular Neurology, Executive Vice Chair of Neurology and Director of the Center for TeleHealth at Massachusetts General Hospital; Vice President for Digital Patient Experience and Virtual Care, and Chief Digital Advisor for the Mass General Brigham Health System, and a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He oversaw all systemwide virtual care and telehealth activities including synchronous and synchronous virtual visits and consults, remote patient monitoring, virtual urgent care and online second opinions. During the first 6 months of COVID, he led adoption efforts for 10,000 clinicians to provide over 1.7 M virtual visits, and introduced a suite of innovative inpatient virtual solutions.

A graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, he completed residency training in neurology, and fellowship training in stroke and neurocritical care, all at Massachusetts General Hospital where he subsequently joined the faculty in 1996. He has spent the past 2 decades in telehealth, as a pioneer in telestroke and a leading advocate and policy advisor for the American Heart Association. He is a an internationally recognized expert in stroke diagnosis, treatment and prevention and a Fellow of the American Heart Association, American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association. His research has been funded by many organizations including the NIH, AHA, PCORI, AHRQ, HRSA, CDC, and others, and he is the author of >500 peer-reviewed articles and chaired many of the current practice guidelines for stroke and telehealth-enabled care delivery. Under his leadership, the AHA Get with the Guidelines–Stroke Registry has grown into the world’s largest stroke registry with over 8M patient encounters; it has changed stroke practice at hospitals across the US, and set a global standard for stroke care. He has received numerous awards for innovation, leadership, and advocacy in the field of stroke and digital health, and held many senior leadership positions within the AHA, including service on their National Board of Directors. He has served on multiple editorial boards, including the digital health section editor for Stroke, and the international advisory board for Lancet Digital Health.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Fellowship
Massachusetts General Hospital (1996)
Residency
Massachusetts General Hospital (1995)
Internship
Beth Israel Hospital (1992)
MD
Harvard Medical School, Medicine (1991)
AB
Harvard University, Philosophy (1985)

Research

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Lee Schwamm's published research.

Publications

2024

Clinical Care

Overview

Lee H. Schwamm, MD, is an internationally recognized expert in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA). His research and clinical interests focus on stroke in the young and those whose strokes are without apparent cause (called cryptogenic strokes). He has been a leader in stroke clinical research, and has participated in the design or conduct of major trials that have defined how stroke is currently measured and treated, and how the guideline-recommended treatments are actually administered when patients are hospitalized for stroke. He deeply enjoys mentoring emerging leaders in academic medicine, and his work has been recognized by major grants and awards, including several of the highest volunteer awards from the American Heart Association.

In addition to his expertise in stroke, Dr. Schwamm is a leader in digital health and digital transformation. He realized early on that his work as a neurologist could be augmented with the infusion of big data, technology, and focusing on improving the processes of how health care is delivered. This translates to redesigning care delivery through the human-centered lens of the experiences of patients and providers, and letting the clinical problem drive what technology can be used to make things better (and not the other way around). “We have a real opportunity now to start capturing a lot more information about our patients in the parts of their life beyond the clinic and the hospital, such as with monitors, sensors, and smartphones, to regularly collect weight, activity, or blood pressure and transmit those results to the electronic medical record,” Dr. Schwamm says. By doing so, doctors can build a smarter profile of their patients, tailor treatments to them as individuals, and get their risk factors under control faster and more safely.

“I’ve always been drawn to the brain,” says Dr. Schwamm. “This fascination began when I chose to major in philosophy in college, and it drove me to choose neurology as my specialty. Within neurology, I gravitated to stroke because of the new treatments that had just emerged that could halt or reverse the damage being caused to the brain. I was able to make a major contribution by developing the ability to leverage technology to increase access to stroke specialists and improve outcomes for all stroke patients, not just those lucky enough to live near a major stroke center.”

Dr. Schwamm also serves as senior vice president and chief digital health officer for Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) and as a professor in Biomedical Informatics & Data Sciences at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). As the associate dean for digital strategy and transformation, he is leading the development of a new digital health strategy for YSM and YNHH. Dr. Schwamm has done extensive research and is especially interested in patterns of care delivery for stroke in the United States; how patients move from one health system to another during emergencies, before or after their stroke; and opportunities to identify and eliminate inequities in care.

“I often say, my car gets better health care than I do. Most patients show up in my office when they have the equivalent of a flat tire, or have run out of gas, or have an engine that is overheated, metaphorically speaking,” he says, “Our job as health care providers is to intervene before those critical events happen.”

All my goals really boil down to removing the barriers between patients and the care they need, Dr. Schwamm adds. “One way is to build high-reliability systems wherever we can so that we don't rely on people doing the right thing every time with good intention, but rather, we have systems that support us in doing that right thing every time.”

Clinical Specialties

Stroke; Neurology

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Contacts

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Mailing Address

Yale School of Medicine

333 Cedar Street - SHM - I-213 , (PO Box 208067)

New Haven, CT 06520-8067

United States

Administrative Support