This Week on Asemio Decoded: Data & Technology with Georgetown’s Dr. Amy O’Hara

This week on Asemio Decoded, we sat down to talk with Dr. Amy O’Hara of the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University. MDI’s aim is to improve public policy and decision-making through modern data and computing power. Dr. O’Hara is a data champion in D.C. on a mission to change the way that administrative data is stored, shared, and analyzed. 

“The real answer is, I do this out of spite.” 

In our interview, Dr. O’Hara recounts how she got involved with data sharing. It started with her own struggles with accessing data for her research. 

“My earliest attempts to use population-level administrative data were just so challenging. I was willing to navigate these awful pathways to data access once. But I wasn’t willing to do it again and again.”  

Early in her career, she started advocating for easier paths to share data. She yearned to conduct more accurate research to inform better policy decisions. Dr. O’Hara’s perseverance through a tangled system and her vision for how we can revolutionize our use of data and technology is an inspiration for anyone working to make data-informed changes in communities across the U.S.  

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