A technical approach to treating pain
Alumna Helen Blake applies engineering principles to improve patient care
For WashU alumna Helen Blake, MD, a career as a physician was always the end goal. But a more traditional pre-med curriculum wasn’t enough to satisfy her need to understand how the human body functions — and the ways physicians can intervene when pain limits that function.
“I truly enjoy the technical aspect of engineering,” she said. “So being able to apply that to the body just made sense.”
Today, Blake, who is board-certified in anesthesiology and pain management, practices medicine in Chesterfield, Missouri, where she helps patients improve their quality of life by successfully treating pain, avoiding surgical intervention and minimizing dependency on medications. She was recently honored by the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience with the Clinical Excellence Award in recognition of exceptional performance in clinical practice, education and commitment to excellence.
Looking back, Blake says timing was everything when it came to choosing WashU.
“In the late 90s, there weren’t that many integrated biomedical engineering departments at universities,” she said. “WashU’s program was new under Frank Yin (founding chair and emeritus professor of biomedical engineering), and I was impressed by what the school could offer.”
Blake was awarded the prestigious Langsdorf Scholarship. While an undergraduate, she gained additional experience as a Howard Hughes Research Fellow.
Blake earned a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering from the Engineering School in 2003, followed by a medical degree from Saint Louis University in 2007. She completed fellowship training at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. During her fellowship, she had the opportunity to train at Weill Cornell Medical Center, the Hospital for Special Surgery and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Always committed to bettering herself as a physician, she earned an executive MBA from the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business in 2022.
“Medical schools altruistically teach you to keep business and medicine separate,” she said. “But bridging that gap helps me run my practice better and ultimately benefits my patients.”
Her roots in engineering continue to impact the way she delivers high-level patient care.
“My medical training in anesthesiology gives me an understanding of the instant pharmacological affects that medications have on the body,” she said. “But it’s my biomedical engineering background that helps me understand what is happening at the physiologic level and how those drugs work in the body.”
Engineering, she says, is present in the methods she uses to overcome or bypass pain signals, including neurostimulators, and devices and implants made by biomedical engineers. Blake also has advanced training in ultrasound-guided injections, radiofrequency ablation procedures and newer regenerative medicine therapies.
“My strong engineering background really informs how I relate to patients and industry partners,” she said. “I have a skill set that covers all the bases.”
The foundation for that skill set, she says, was strengthened at WashU.
“I’m so glad I spent my formative years at WashU,” she said. “The education is not singularly focused. It made me a well-rounded individual and gave me a breadth of understanding and empathy that I don’t think I’d have gotten anywhere else.”
She often passes the campus and feels a familiar wave of nostalgia that reminds her just how far she’s come — and where it all started. For the students still forging their own path, she offers advice influenced by her “penchant for engineering.
“Don’t close yourself off because something comes up that you didn’t have in your vision,” she said. “If you’re being pulled toward something, listen to that force that’s pulling you. That’s often how we end up exactly where we need to be.”
