Penn Medicine and Wharton School Assistant Professor and LDI Senior Fellow Mitesh Patel has won the 2018 Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award, according to an AcademyHealth announcement this afternoon. The award ceremony will take place at the health services research organization’s upcoming June 24-26 Annual Research Meeting in Seattle.

‘Important impact’
According to the AcademyHealth award committee, Patel, MD, MBA, MS, was selected for the “high quantity and quality of his work, as well as the important impact of his research and involvement in health policy.”

Patel, whose research has focused on health incentives and behavioral economics, is the Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, a joint venture between the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation (CHCI) and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE).

The launch of that new unit three years ago made history as the first behavioral economics organization ever established within a health system. Its researchers study the internal infrastructure, processes and medical practices of a sprawling big city health system with an eye to improving financial and clinical outcomes.

Digital technologies
Patel’s work has also ranged along the rapidly evolving interface of digital health technologies and behavioral economics. He has led more than 20 clinical trials in partnership with health systems, insurers, employers, and community organizations that tested ways to design nudges, incentives, and gamifications to change clinician and patient behavior. The work includes digital health interventions using wearable devices and smartphones, and health system interventions using the electronic health record.

A staff physician at the Crescenz Veterans Administration Medical Center, Patel is also a faculty member at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation (CHCI) and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE).

He received his MD from the University of Michigan, his MBA in Health Care Management from the Wharton School and his MS in Health Policy Research from the Perelman School of Medicine.

$2,500 prize
The Alice S. Hersh Award, which comes with a $2,500 prize, commemorates the dedication and accomplishments of its late namesake, the founding executive director of the Association for Health Services Research — the organization that evolved into today’s AcademyHealth.