For the first two years of medical school, Richard Lisi III was going through his coursework, learning the basics of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, and basically preparing for his planned career as a physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Lisi, a 2018 College of Health Sciences graduate and Cranston, R.I. native, was inspired to alter his plans. The medical student with a degree in kinesiology and exercise science<\/a> paused his studies at the Rutgers University\u2019s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and pivoted his career ambitions, enrolling in the Master of Business Administration program at New York University\u2019s Stern School of Business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen COVID hit, I started really looking at the health care system as a whole and how our traditional modalities were failing and breaking down,\u201d Lisi said. \u201cWait times were outrageous; our supply chain was in shambles; this new digital world was thrust upon us and I don\u2019t think it was something we were really ready for. I started looking at where physicians were in all of this technology and innovation, and I kind of felt that they didn\u2019t really have that representation. A lot of the innovation leaders are businessmen, not necessarily physicians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a physician with business acumen has the potential to initiate change, Lisi figured, so he enrolled in a one-year technology MBA program at NYU-Stern, an accelerated program featuring technically-focused classes, like application development and machine learning. The goal is to get business leaders to understand new technologies and how to leverage them to their business\u2019 advantage, Lisi said. There, he has been learning how to tackle business issues, and what it takes to run a successful firm, especially in medicine, \u201cwhere you are often dealing with penetrating markets that are very difficult to get into.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his year at Stern, which is set to finish in May, Lisi has done consulting for Pfizer, Mastercard and a blockchain company in the travel industry. Even before he got to Stern, he started getting digital health experience by interning for Elemeno Health<\/a>, a healthcare startup out of Oakland, CA looking to empower frontline medical staff with direct digital access to their hospital\u2019s latest policies & information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI spent a lot of time working with the CEO, who is actually a physician doing exactly what I felt was lacking in medicine,\u201d Lisi said, noting he is also beginning a monthlong workshop at Boston Consulting Group for physicians who want to get into consulting. \u201cI learned what it takes to get innovative health care products through the bureaucracy. That kind of business and tech with medicine is a combination I thought would be most useful for myself. It was a really great experience leading into the MBA program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Lisi\u2019s plan is to return to medical school and finish his last two years at Rutgers, before beginning a career combining his medical skill with his business acumen. He hopes to embrace and introduce new technology to his medical colleagues, and change antiquated systems in health care, all with an eye toward improving patient care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow we\u2019ve traditionally viewed patient care is a very health care centered-view; all the control is out of the patient\u2019s hands,\u201d Lisi said. \u201cThey go in, they\u2019re subject to the throes of the supply chain issues with the hospital, the queques in the waiting room, the availability of a surgeon. To get a prescription, there are all these barriers \u2013 checking insurance, checking all their other medications, waiting for the prescription to get sent. A lot of these things are relying on outdated processes. There are ways in which this process of getting health care can be made a lot smoother, a lot more cost-effective, easier, more transparent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the pandemic has taught us anything it\u2019s that we no longer need to be constrained by geographical boundaries, transportation problems or scheduling conflicts. Thanks to technology like telehealth that has emerged more into the mainstream over the past two years, people with mobility problems don\u2019t always have to get help to go to the doctor anymore. Those with multiple providers don\u2019t necessarily need to travel all over the state seeking care. It can all be done in the comfort of their own homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPhysicians understand the difficulties and the gaps many patients face, but they don\u2019t always have the frameworks to identify them or the technical skillset to get those solutions off the ground,\u201d Lisi said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of what I envision as my place in medicine. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll necessarily be practicing my whole career, but I\u2019m really trying to be a thought leader and lead that change in the attitude toward technology. The tools are there to enhance the level of care we can provide, as well as make patients\u2019 lives easier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lisi acquired many of his own tools during his time at URI, where he worked closely with kinesiology Professor Christie Ward-Ritacco<\/a> and Lecturer Shabnam Lateef<\/a>, both of whom he credited with helping him find the knowledge and the confidence he needed to pursue a medical degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat URI and the College of Health Sciences enabled for me was this transition from thinking about things linearly and in a vacuum to really thinking about how do all these elements interplay,\u201d Lisi said. \u201cWith exercise science and biomechanics, there are all these moving parts; you can\u2019t always pinpoint it to a single cause. Those types of skills and frameworks and how to think critically is something I was able to carry through into medicine. That is the very foundation of how I approach things in medical school and in business school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the future, Lisi said he hopes to give back to URI, possibly setting up a fund for innovation for the university he said gave him the most formative experience thus far in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI cherish my time at URI. The mentors I met at URI were extremely important to my life,\u201d Lisi said. \u201cI really feel like URI is a place you can get a world-class education. It\u2019s not going to be handed to you, but if you want opportunities, they are absolutely there at URI, and you can do anything you want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The exercise science and Kinesiology graduate takes break from medical school to earn an MBA; aims to merge medicine with business tech and innovation. For the first two years of medical school, Richard Lisi III was going through his coursework, learning the basics of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, and basically preparing for his planned career […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":9895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9898,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9894\/revisions\/9898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}