Justy Antony Chiramal

Justy holds an MS in Epidemiology from the University of Washington School of Public Health, as well as her MBBS and MD-Internal Medicine degrees from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and a DTMH (Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene) from the Cayetano Heredia University, Lima, Peru. Justy is a trained Internal Medicine Physician with more than 7 years of clinical practice in Bangalore and Vellore, India. She worked as a Clinical Advisor for Qure.ai for 4 years prior to her graduate studies and was instrumental in deploying Artificial Intelligence based software for automated interpretation of Chest X-rays and CT brain scans in resource limited healthcare settings in India. Her research interests include global health, AI in medicine, Tuberculosis-early diagnostics, infectious diseases, vaccine safety surveillance, and technological innovations to support overburdened rural healthcare systems in LMICs.

Justy worked on seven projects during her two-year engagement at START, acting as the Project Manager for two of them. Below are highlights from two of the projects Justy worked on:

• MNCH Home Births: The START team conducted a literature review, a dataset review, and key informant interviews to research the differential mortality outcomes between facility and home births and related home birth interventions, first in India, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, and then in other geographies in sub-Saharan African and South Asia.
• Serotype Epidemiology of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (IPD): The START team conducted and updated a literature review of published research to abstract IPD serotype data, and updated the existing IPD tool. Then the team presented the findings of analysis of epidemiology and PCV coverage analysis to the members of the Pneumonia Pandemic Preparedness Team.

Justy shares this reflection on her time with the START Center, “I am so grateful for the opportunity to work at the START center with some of the most hardworking and sincere students, staff and faculty. Even my children felt welcomed as part of the START family. In my time here, I got to work in 7 projects that spanned across doing systematic reviews to developing mathematical models, with some great clients at the Gates Foundation and Abbott Labs. As a student representative and international student I was also able to be a liaison between students and leadership. START also provided great mentorship and training opportunities that helped me develop skills in project management, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion frameworks, job club, and interview skills. START helped me dedicate protected time for work, and provided funding for my MS. I am so glad that I chose UW and START among the various options that I had for my higher studies!”

Justy currently works for Qure.ai as Director for Product Analysis and Adoption.