Zia Agha, MD
Dr. Agha is a fellowship-trained general internal medicine
physician and health services researcher. He currently holds a dual
appointment with the VA San Diego Healthcare System as the
Interim Director of HSR&D and University of California, San
Diego as an Associate Professor of Medicine. His research focus is
in the area of outcomes evaluation of health information
technologies (HIT). Within this broad area of HIT, he has focused
on human factors (eg, provider-patient communication) and
outcome evaluation (eg cost effectiveness) studies of Telemedicine
and EHR technologies.
Dr. Agha’s current work includes evaluation of usability, clinical
work and provider-patient communications during EHR-based
clinical encounters in primary care. The primary focus of this
project is to develop specific educational interventions to improve
patient-centered communication during EHR-based visits.
He is also leading a number of telehealth
projects, including clinical studies looking
at patient-provider communication during
tele-psychotherapy for veterans with
PTSD, and the role of web-based
monitoring systems for sleep apnea on
patient adherence and self management.