About Me

Strategic operations, data, and software at the intersection of health services research and emergency medicine

Who I Am

I'm David Spatholt — Strategic Operations and Data Manager in the Department of Emergency Medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. I run the research operations for the Population Health & Health Services (PH2S) program, supporting a portfolio of NIH-funded research on pain, addiction, trauma recovery, and health equity.

My work lives at the intersection of three worlds: health services research (study design, data architecture, grant logistics), software development (dashboards, schedulers, automation pipelines), and operations management (compliance, team coordination, strategic planning). I build tools that make research faster and more reproducible.

My Approach

I believe the best research tools are invisible — they automate the tedious, flag the important, and get out of the way. Whether it's a constraint-based nurse scheduler, an automated grant opportunity radar, or a Pebble watchface that puts your calendar on your wrist, I build things that solve specific, real problems. I'm a heavy user of LLMs as development accelerators — the app gallery on this site is a collection of single-page HTML tools I've built with Gemini, Claude, and others.

What Drives Me

Emergency departments are the front door of the healthcare system. They're where prevention meets crisis, where health disparities are most visible, and where small interventions can have outsized impact. Supporting research that improves emergency care — making it more equitable, more evidence-based, and more patient-centered — is work worth doing.

Education

  • MBA — The Ohio State University (currently enrolled)
  • MHI — Health Informatics, The Ohio State University (currently enrolled)
  • MCP — Clinical Pharmacology, The Ohio State University

Research Areas

  • Health services research & implementation science
  • Opioid decision-making and substance use disorder screening
  • Trauma recovery and post-traumatic outcomes (AURORA study)
  • Health equity in emergency care
  • Discrete event simulation in healthcare operations
  • Data architecture and research informatics

Technical Toolkit

Languages & Tools: Python, R, SQL, Bash, JavaScript, Git, Docker
Frameworks & Platforms: OR-Tools (CP-SAT), Flask, GitHub Actions, Google Colab, Pandas, dplyr
AI & Automation: Hermes Agent, Claude, Gemini, LLM APIs, cron/scheduling, web scraping
Other: Home Assistant, Pebble SDK, Airtable, OSRM/OpenStreetMap, Ghost CMS

Beyond Work

When I'm not building research infrastructure or tinkering with code, I'm usually working on an MBA, learning health informatics, or exploring what LLMs can do. I run a Home Assistant setup, build Pebble watchfaces, and maintain a personal wiki/knowledge base. I believe in boring tools that work well, elegant constraint-based solutions, and writing things down.