Hosted by the Department of Biostatistics
"The wide adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems has led to the availability of large clinical datasets available for discovery research. EHR data, linked with bio-repository, is a valuable new source for deriving real-word, data-driven prediction models of disease risk and progression. Yet, they also bring analytical difficulties especially when aiming to leverage multi-institutional EHR data. Synthesizing information across healthcare systems is challenging due to heterogeneity and privacy. Statistical challenges also arise due to high dimensionality in the feature space. In this talk, Dr. Tianxi Cai will discuss analytical approaches for mining EHR data to improve the reliability and generalizability of real world evidence generated from the analyses. These methods will be illustrated using EHR data from multiple healthcare systems including Mass General Brigham and Veteran affairs.
About the Speaker: Tianxi Cai is a major player in developing analytical tools for mining EHR data and predictive modeling with biomedical data. She provides statistical leadership on several large-scale projects, including the NIH-funded Undiagnosed Diseases Network at DBMI. Cai's research lab develops novel statistical and machine learning methods for several areas including clinical trials, real world evidence, and personalized medicine using genomic and phenomic data. Cai received her ScD in Biostatistics at Harvard and was an assistant professor at the University of Washington before returning to Harvard as a faculty member in 2002."