Applied Ethics AI Subcore Discussion Forum
Discussion Topic: "Outcomes-Centered Evaluation of Multi-Use Clinical Algorithms: Case Studies in Kidney, Lung, and Cardiovascular Disease"
This talk will cover research published in NEJM and JAMA on the clinical, occupational, and financial implications of including or excluding selected demographic features in equations used across various medical fields. It will explore the limitations of binary decision thresholds, socio-demographic model inputs, and population-derived reference ranges, and then discuss alternative approaches that prioritize precise causal measures and patient-centered outcomes.
About the Speaker
Dr. James Diao is a physician-scientist based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics. His research uses computational and statistical tools to develop and evaluate clinical algorithms with the goal of improving health for various populations. Previously, he developed AI models for pathology image analysis at PathAI and investigated wearable-derived measures of cardiovascular fitness at Apple. Dr. Diao earned his MD from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) as a PD Soros Fellow, MPhil from the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar, and degrees in biochemistry and statistics from Yale College.
Thursday, May 15, 2025 from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Central Time