Joaquin Vizcarra Pasapera, MD, is a movement disorders neurologist and Instructor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. His work centers on the intersection of clinical neurology, bioinformatics, and digital health, with a focus on improving outcomes for people living with Parkinson’s disease. At Penn, he is developing natural language processing pipelines to extract and synthesize real-world data from electronic health records, with particular attention to fall risk, mobility, and symptom tracking.
As part of this work, Vizcarra is building tools that bridge the gap between patient-reported outcomes and technology-based objective measures, aiming to create scalable solutions for monitoring disease progression in routine care. His broader research interests include clinical decision support, predictive modeling, and digital phenotyping in neurodegenerative diseases.
Vizcarra is active in the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, where he serves on the Steering Committee of the Technology Task Force and as vice chair for the development of the society’s electronic diary. In these roles, he contributes to global efforts to integrate digital measures into clinical research and care.
He earned his medical degree from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru, and completed a research fellowship in movement disorders at the University of Cincinnati, followed by a neurology residency and service as Chief Resident at Emory University. He then completed a clinical fellowship in movement disorders at Penn. He is currently supported by a National Institutes of Health T32 grant and is pursuing a Master of Science in Translational Research with a concentration in clinical bioinformatics.