McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics Associate Professor’s article published in JAMA

Associate Professor W. Jim Zheng, Ph.D., M.S. recently wrote an article that JAMA published this week.  The article, titled “Informatics, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence,” was co-authored with Lisha Zhu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who works with Zheng.

“We understand informatics, but health data science is a new field and artificial intelligence, while established, has new meaning now after breakthroughs in methodologies, improved computing power, and the availability of large amounts of data” explained Zheng. “This article explores the new, deep relationship between all three concepts: informatics, health data science and artificial intelligence.”

Zheng earned a Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) grant in 2017, and established the Data Science and Informatics Core for Cancer Research. With the more than $5.8 million grant, Zheng has worked to “translate the cutting-edge data science and informatics research at SBMI to easily accessible, high quality, and user-friendly software and services to advance cancer research.”  

JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that it is “the most widely circulated medical journal in the world, with more than 320,000 recipients of the print journal, 1.2 million recipients of electronic tables of contents and alerts, and over 20 million annual visits to the journal's website.” With such a wide audience, Zheng has an opportunity to make a large impact with his research.

Zheng stated, “Many physicians are not aware of the advances informatics, health data science and artificial intelligence offer for improving biomedical research and the way health care is delivered.” Zheng continued, “This article explores the new deep relationship among all three concepts: informatics, health data science and artificial intelligence, and their impact on the methodologies of biomedical research.”

The article is now available, online. Click here to find Zheng’s JAMA article.

published on 9/19/2018 at 1:20 p.m.