News & Events
CPH in the News
How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Medicine
Featured faculty: Adam Yala, PhD
Adam Yala talks machine learning, cancer risk prediction and the future transformation of medicine The Brain Surgeon’s Take Podcast.
Source: The Brain Surgeon’s Take
November 9, 2023
Prediction-powered inference for assessment of confidence intervals and uncertainty in ML
Featured faculty: Michael Jordan, PhD
Which questions does machine learning answer well or badly? ML models have lacked the ability to label confidence intervals or quantify statistical certainty when producing results. Michael Jordan and colleagues introduce “prediction-powered inference,” a standardized protocol for constructing valid confidence intervals and P values to help ML systems to be used as predictors while ensuring responsible and reliable inference.
Source: Berkeley News
November 9, 2023

Increasing time spent on Electronic Medical Record may require system/reimbursement reform
Featured faculty: A. Jay Holmgren, PhD
A. Jay Holmgren and colleagues find time by physicians in the Electronic Medical Record is up sharply, both during and after patient scheduled hours. UCSF providers spent nearly 5.5 of 8 patient scheduled hours working in the EMR. Health systems and policymakers may need to adjust both productivity expectations and reimbursement policies.
Source: Healthcare IT News
November 8, 2023

Machine Learning to improve options for Medicare patients
Featured faculty: Jonathan Kolstad, PhD
Jonathan Kolstad and Berkeley Haas colleagues have created Healthpilot–a free, online platform that uses machine learning to weigh complex personalized factors and provide Medicare consumers with recommendations for better, and often lower cost, coverage options than those offered by insurance brokers.
Source: Berkeley Haas Newsroom
November 7, 2023

Berkeley School of Public Health and Kaiser Permanente partner to launch new CA Center for Outbreak Readiness
Featured faculty: Joseph Lewnard, PhD and Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer, MD, PhD
With a $17.5M grant from the CDC, CPH faculty and colleagues are partnering with Kaiser Permanente Southern California to launch a new center boosting California’s capacity to respond to infectious disease outbreaks. The California Center for Outbreak Readiness will develop cutting-edge analytics, tools and platform for emergency health response.
Source: Berkeley Public Health News
October 18, 2023

Clinical AI: Predictive Power as Possible Pitfall
Featured faculty: Adam Yala, PhD
As medical AI tools are deployed in the hospital, their accuracy may falter as patients do better. Adam Yala comments on the limitations of predictive models and the needed work to improve them.
Source: Stat News
October 10, 2023
An expert shares how AI could help doctors treat domestic violence victims
Featured faculty: Irene Y. Chen, PhD
In this Q&A, Irene Chen describes how machine learning could help clinicians identify and support victims of intimate partner violence, her work on machine learning for equitable healthcare, and a related upcoming event at UCSF, Toward Algorithmic Justice in Precision Medicine
Source: College of Computing, Data Science, and Society
October 3, 2023

AI and Clinical Practice: Augmenting Humanity in Medicine
Featured faculty: Ida Sim, MD/PhD
JAMA Editor in Chief Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, in conversation with Ida Sim, Professor of Medicine, UCSF and CPH co-Director, about the promise and perils of AI in the clinical encounter, and how to keep humanity at the center.
Source: JAMA Network
September 27, 2023

What EHR Metadata Tell Us About Team-Based Interventions for Inbox Reduction
Featured faculty: A. Jay Holmgren, PhD
Host Dr. Christine Sinsky, AMA Vice President of Professional Satisfaction, and guest A Jay Holmgren, Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research, discuss how assessing Epic Signal data and other EHR metadata can be a useful tool for evaluating team-based interventions to reduce inbox volume.
Source: American Medical Association
September 13, 2023

The 100 most Influential People in AI 2023
Featured faculty: Ziad Obermeyer, MD; Stuart Russell, PhD
Time highlights Ziad Obermeyer’s work on detecting racial bias in algorithms and use of machine learning to improve physician decision making, and Stuart Russell’s pioneering work to make sure that AI is beneficial to humans.
Source: Time
September 7, 2023

An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove: A Conversation with Dr. Atul Butte
Featured faculty: Atul Butte, MD/PhD
In the NEJM AI Grand Rounds podcast, Atul Butte describes his trailblazing and storied career as a biomedical informatics researcher and entrepreneur, and Chief Data Scientist for UC Health.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
August 23, 2023

New & Notable
Ahmed Alaa wins Microsoft grant for LLM use in real-world evidence evaluation
Featured faculty: Ahmed Alaa, PhD; Maya Petersen, MD, PhD; Mark van der Laan, PhD
Ahmed Alaa has been awarded a grant from Microsoft’s Accelerate Foundation Models Research Program to use LLMs to develop statistical analysis plans for observational studies. Working with CPH faculty Maya Petersen and Mark van der Laan, Alaa and team will create a chatbot-based LLM that will communicate with multiple stakeholders (statisticians, drug developers & clinical researchers) to develop high-quality statistical analysis plans to evaluate evidence for health benefit in contexts where clinical trials are impracticable.
Source: Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research Program October 25, 2023

Atul Butte wins 2023 Stead Award for Thought Leadership in Informatics
Featured faculty: Atul Butte, MD, PhD, FACMI
Dr. Atul Butte has been awarded the 2023 Stead Award for Thought Leadership in Informatics, in acknowledgement of influence over our thinking about informatics, especially improving health and health care in ways that are visionary and transformative.
Source: AMIA October 9, 2023

Yulin Hswen appointed associate editor at JAMA and the JAMA Network
Featured faculty: Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH
Yulin Hswen has been appointed as a JAMA associate editor in artificial intelligence and medicine. Hswen joins the editorial board, where she will help guide the strategic direction for JAMA and the JAMA Network.
Source: UCSF News July 10, 2023

Upcoming Events
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Recent Events
October 31, 2023
CPH PhD Presentation: UC Berkeley Virtual Graduate Diversity Admissions Fair
Learn more about the Computational Precision Health PhD program, our commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, and details on the application and admissions process for 2024 matriculation. A presentation by CPH co-Directors, Drs. Maya Petersen, and Ida Sim, with CPH faculty, Drs. Adam Yala, Irene Chen, and Sandya Subramanian.
November 2, 2023
Seminar: Dr. Gilmer Valdes "Lockout: Sparse regulation of neural networks"
Featured Faculty: Gilmer Valdes, PhD
A seminar by Gilmer Valdes on "Lockout"--a fast algorithm to address limitations of other analysis models for Neural Networks, and specific applications in medicine and medical image data.
October 24, 2023
Seminar: Dr. Emre Kiciman "Causal inference and LLMs: A new frontier"
The Center for Targeted Machine Learning and Computational Precision Health are pleased to present a seminar by Dr. Emre Kiciman, Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research
Seminar recording forthcoming
September 28, 2023
Ethics in the Age of AI Health Monitoring
Featured faculty: Ida Sim, MD, PhD
A discussion between Anita Ho, PhD, MPH and Ida Sim, MD, PhD on remote health monitoring and artificial intelligence ethics using case studies from Dr. Ho’s new book, Live Like Nobody Is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring.
September 12, 2023
ML4H Rising Stars Series, #5: Machine learning for clinical trials & precision medicine
A presentation by Dr. Ruishan Liu, Incoming Assistant Professor, Stanford University
August 28, 2023
ML4H Rising Stars Series, #4: LLMs for Transformative Healthcare at Scale (Med-PaLM)
A presentation by Karan Singhal, Staff Research Engineer, Google Research
August 15, 2023
ML4H Rising Stars Series, #3: Toward Next-Generation Health and Well-being
A presentation by Dr. Xuhai "Orson" Xu, Postdoc, MIT
August 11, 2023
Transforming Personal and Public Health Through Computation
Featured faculty: Ida Sim, MD, PhD
A presentation by Ida Sim, part of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine Mini Medical School for the Public series