13th Annual Katz Policy Lecture

Malaz Boustani

Founding Director, Sandra Eskenazi Center for Brain Care Innovation & Chief Innovation and Implementation Officer for Indiana University Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science

Dr. Boustani is a geriatrician, neuroscientist, and implementation scientist with extensive experience in developing, evaluating, implementing, and disseminating healthcare innovations focused on brain health. He is the Founding Director of the Sandra Eskenazi Center for Brain Care Innovation and the Chief Innovation and Implementation Officer for Indiana University Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science. Over the past decade, Dr. Boustani built a clinical laboratory of more than 2,000 ambulatory practices which impacts at least 10 million lives within Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. He also developed a combined human- and computer-based decision support system to detect cognitive impairments among hospitalized elders, reducing exposure to potentially harmful medications and procedures, and enhancing the recovery of brain health after critical illness. He contributed to the identification of the acute and chronic adverse cognitive effects of medications and developed the anticholinergic cognitive burden scale. His investigation led to the discovery that exposure to medications with adverse cognitive effect may lead to the future development of dementia including Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment. Furthermore, he developed, evaluated, and implemented the collaborative Aging Brain Care model in primary care. This model has achieved the triple aim of improving brain health, improving brain care and reducing cost, and has become the standard of brain care in central Indiana and across the world.