Amy K Dickey, MD, MSC

Dr. Amy Dickey is a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) with internal medicine and pulmonary and critical care training pursuing a career in clinical and translational porphyria research. Her personal history with porphyria began at age 3, when she started to have painful sunlight sensitivity from erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP). However, she was not diagnosed until age 13. During her fellowship, she initially studied basic immunology related to HIV-TB co-infection. Concurrently, however, her personal history with EPP and her increasing involvement with the Porphyrias Consortium and the American Porphyria Foundation convinced her of the great need for researchers studying porphyria. In the years since initiating research in porphyria, she has developed and conducted clinical research projects, completed a research fellowship in healthcare innovation through the MGH Healthcare Transformation Lab, and obtained research funding from the MGH Medicine Innovation Program and the National Institutes of Health. In addition to research, she has also served as a spokeswoman for the porphyria community, speaking to the Food and Drug Administration about porphyria, writing an opinion piece in STAT news, giving lectures to physicians about porphyria, and presenting at porphyria patient support group meetings. She is a Protect the Future Trainee of the American Porphyria Foundation, a program designed to train the next generation of porphyria specialists. She is also co-director of a newly started porphyria clinic within hematology. In addition to her clinical and research pursuits on the topic of porphyria, she continues to see patients with pulmonary disease in the MGH Pulmonary Associates Clinic and continues to take care of patients in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at MGH.