Afreen Shariff

I am an Endocrinologist, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism and an Associate Director for the Multi-Disciplinary Toxicity Program at the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Duke Cancer Institute.  During my fellowship at Duke University, I developed an interest in managing endocrine toxicities from cancer drugs. Following the completion of my training, I continued as an endocrinologist and faculty at Duke with expertise in the field of Endo-Oncology, a new field at the intersection of endocrinology and oncology with a small number of experts nationally. I work closely with oncologists and other subspecialists to enhance access and provide high-value and personalized multidisciplinary clinical care for oncology patients receiving cancer therapy.

My experience with managing toxicities from cancer drugs lead me to identify that delay in access often leads to avoidable hospital admissions in high risk cancer patients. To enhance access, I developed a telehealth program targeting oncology patients with endocrine side effects from cancer drugs at Duke Cancer Institute. This service was launched during the SARS-CoV2 pandemic with a goal to keep our patients safe and to provide expert recommendations and triage to high acuity patients with in 48 hours. The most prominent success of the program has been reduction in wait times from an average of 52 days down to 1 day for recommendations. As an extension of this e-consult service, I started the Endo-Oncology program at Duke which is a trans-disciplinary program which has been successful at providing streamline care, expert triage through E-consults and quick access clinic appointments to high acuity patients.

Over the last few years, I have created strong partnerships, clinical infrastructure and framework that support cancer patients and more recently recognized the potential of AI-assisted clinical decision making to enhance interdisciplinary care for patients with immune related toxicities.