Each year we enter a process of acknowledgement with the passing of the prior year and embracement of change in the new. This cycle of renewal is built upon reflection of what we have learned, but also visioning towards where we want to go. Each of us individually can be ‘born’ new each year and has an opportunity to re-make ourselves, re-cement our commitments, and re-charter new direction.

As we enter 2024, the re-new-al affords opportunities for us to apply our hearts, hands, and head to solve the world’s most difficult challenges. We have tools ready in our skillset that harness technology (i.e. blockchain, predictive analytics, LLM, bioinformatics, alerts, workflows, devices, and so much more) to improve care. Healthcare is in evolution and the revolution of AI is upon us. We are all already affected by AI today, from what we buy to how we receive information. Now, we commit to use AI to innovate, break boundaries, and make healthcare more evenly delivered and safely implemented than ever. We are the people power behind that change. Tomorrow is about intention – re-new-ALL.

Intention will serve as the ‘engine’ for change inclusive of social justice. Solving our nations most difficult challenge requires – this intention – for ALL. Over the winter break, I was reading Poverty by America, authored by Matthew Desmond, who provides a comprehensive look at root causes of challenges encountered by people living in economically disadvantaged lives. As shared in this NPR publication, “[there are] small, tiny interventions that address those problems [and] see massive returns on people accessing aid that they need (citation: January 18, 2024; https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/21/1164275807/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond-inequality). We have the capacity to weave solutions that incorporate social justice to embed power back to the people who benefit the most. May we each self-reflect on how technology and discovery will enable our hospitals, care delivery, and community health RE-new-ALL to deliver balance in the inequities of health.

Amy M. Sitapati, MD

Interim Chief, Division of Biomedical Informatics, UCSD

Interim Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics, UCSDH

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Our newest member to DBMI Faculty, Karandeep Singh, MD, has been named inaugural Chief Health Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer at UC San Diego Health. Dr. Singh will serve as the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Endowed Chair in Digital Health Innovation at the UCSD School of Medicine. His position will focus on implementing change that advances safety and health outcomes in acute and ambulatory settings, including leading organizational approaches that integrate AI into clinical workflows, reduce documentation time, and improve efficiencies and patient experience. In a sit-down interview with The San Diego Union Tribune, Dr. Singh shares his decision to join UCSD Health and outlines the goals that AI can help UCSD Health in achieving to enhance patient care.

Interm Chief, Amy Sitapati, MD, joined leaders from across the university in sharing UCSD's AI advancements across sectors, from healthcare to environmental health, and the university’s commitment to AI innovation during a legislative briefing and advocacy visits on Capitol Hill in December. The Biden-Harris Administration has shared their commitment to placing the highest urgency on governing the development and use of AI safely and responsibly to drive improved health outcomes for Americans while safeguarding their security and privacy. UCSD Health is among one of the many Healthcare Providers that have committed to investigating and developing valuable uses of AI responsibly, including developing solutions that advance health equity, expand access to care, make care affordable, coordinate care to improve outcomes, reduce clinician burnout, and otherwise improve the experience of patients. Read more about the White House AI commitments and strategy here. 

Christopher Longhurst, MD, FACMI, attended the White House listening session on October 20 regarding healthcare AI. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hosted a total of 15 listening sessions on the proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to hear from different voices across the community. Representing UCSD Health, Dr. Longhurst shared that, “The conversation left me very optimistic about our federal leaders' collective willingness to understand challenges and opportunities prior to regulating.” 

Dr. Longhurst also testified before the November 29 Congressional subcommittee on health AI. The House Energy and Commerce Committee held the hearing “Understanding How AI is Changing Health Care” to allow members a chance to hear from experts and those in the field about how AI is currently being used, as well as what guardrails, like a national data privacy standard, are needed to protect people’s privacy. More information on the hearing can be found here. 

UCSD School of Medicine has been awarded the first ARPA-H award for any UC campus, with $9.5 million toward aiding researchers to develop ways to prevent and mitigate ransomware attacks. Dr. Christian Dameff and Dr. Jeff Tully who were awarded this ARPA-H grant now co-direct the newly established Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at UC San Diego. In recent issue by UCSD Today, Christopher Longhurst, MD, FACMI, speaks on how grant will benefit campus in continuing to be a leader of healthcare cybersecurity. The new center is enabled and supported by the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, for which Dr. Longhurst also serves as executive director.

UCSD School of Medicine has received a $5 million, five-year grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to establish a Center for Learning Health Systems Science. The center will provide instructional and experiential learning opportunities for clinicians and researchers in learning health systems science, an emerging interdisciplinary field that seeks to improve health care delivery within modern health systems. Ming Tai-Seale, PhD  serves as the PI for the new award, and will be leading the Administrative Core of the center. Michael Hogarth, MD, will be leading the Research Data and Analytics Core, which will provide data science expertise to scientists within the center. We invite you to read more here. 

DBMI has recognized Amy Sitapati as Faculty of the Year, Tracy Layton as Staff of the Year and Brian Johnson as Trainee of the Year for 2023!  All were nominated by their colleagues and peers for their hard work and contributions. We want to take a moment to thank them for their dedication and kindness that helped all of us have a successful 2023!  See below for summarized statements made by peers with nominations: 

Amy:

Despite a hectic schedule, Amy consistently prioritizes making the team feel valued and heard, demonstrating genuine care and appreciation. Her ability to take the reins and provide inspiring leadership has been commendable, creating a positive and inclusive work environment.

Tracy:

Tracy demonstrates exceptional leadership and initiative, consistently going above and beyond her role to support the UCSD All of Us team. She has played a crucial role in the success of the team, particularly during the demanding All of Us 5-year proposal renewal, where she dedicated long hours to ensure its completion. Tracy's dedication and hard work have been recognized, with colleagues expressing gratitude for her wonderful, kind, and amazing leadership. Tracy's contributions extend to supporting the local team, connecting with various HPOs, addressing roadblocks, and ensuring the success of the All of us team.

Brian:

Brian excels at hosting engaging town hall events, and is always a friendly and helpful face around campus. He always acts with a calming grace and consistently brings a positive energy to the atmosphere.

We would like to take a moment to recognize and congratulate team members who have reached significant milestones. We celebrate Mericar Domdom and Morgan Conrad for dedicating 5 years of service to UCSD! Additionally, we want to congratulate Matteo D’Antonio, PhD  for a decade of service to UCSD! We express our deepest gratitude to each of you for your loyalty, commitment, and hard work. Your achievements and contributions have helped DBMI continue to succeed. Congratulations on this milestone! 

Robin made her entrance into the world in July! Recently, she celebrated her very first Halloween and Thanksgiving. Robin’s mom Lauryn Keeler Bruce, and dad are grateful to be able to create memories with their new addition. Join us in sending our warmest wishes and congratulations to their family!

We want to take time to celebrate the following students for successfully defending their dissertations!  

Fatemeh Amrollahi
Generalizable Risk Predictive Deep Learning Models

Jonathan E. Pekar
“The zoonotic origins and molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2”

Wilfredo Gonzalez-Rivera presented a poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) on Local Ancestry-Aware Genotype Principal Component Analysis on Chronic Kidney Disease GWAS signals. The presentation focused on the underrepresentation of the Hispanic/Latinx population in genomic research and explored biases and limitations it can lead to. As well as a proposed method to improve the detection of genetic variants associated with diseases and traits in diverse and admixed populations. 

In a recent Issue of Biomed Central, Lauryn Keeler Bruce and co-authors unveiled new findings in the variability of temperature measurements by biological sex. As highlighted in The Washington Post, Lauryn’s study found in examining data from 300 males and females, aged 20-79 that despite sex differences in body temperature, neither group was more variable than the other. These findings contradict the viewpoint that human females are too variable across menstrual cycles to include in biomedical research. We invite you to view the full publication here. 

Wilfredo Gonzalez-Rivera, predoc gave a oral presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) 2023 Conference on Breaking Barriers in GWAS for Admixed Populations: Unraveling the Complexity of Social Descriptors and Genetic Variation in Precision Medicine. Wilfredo was awarded the ABRCMS Graduate Student Travel Award to attend the conference. The presentation focused on improving the prediction of traits in admixed populations by developing methods that do not rely on traditional race or ethnicity labels to create a quantitative model of local ancestry, based on haplotypes, which can be used in Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and for constructing Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS). 

Presented below are the key findings from Wilfredo’s presentation:

“Findings show that within each haplotype block, a small number of haplotypes account for a substantial proportion of the haplotypic variation across populations. The study suggests that labeling haplotypes as belonging to specific populations can lead to inaccuracies. Therefore, an ancestry-agnostic haplotype-based approach is proposed to develop a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to genetic research. This could advance precision medicine, population genetics, and personalized healthcare, benefiting individuals from diverse ancestral backgrounds.”

Did you know that you can give recognition to another UCSD Health employee using the MyPerformance system? Go into MyPerformance (Blink > Personal > UCLearning > MyPerformance > Continuous Feedback > Provide Recognition) to give them a shout-out. The staff member will receive notice of the positive recognition, and their supervisor will be cc’ed. If you received fantastic service from someone in IT, HR, housekeeping, or a colleague, don’t hesitate to use the system to thank them.

Did you know that DBMI has a virtual suggestion box where you can provide anonymous feedback? You can access that here. You can also access the virtual suggestion box on the DBMI website – scroll to the bottom of the homepage and click on the feedback link.

Montazid S, Bandyopadhyay S, Hart DW, Gao N, Johnson B, Thrumurthy SG, Penn DJ, Wernisch B, Bansal M, Altrock PM, Rost F, Gazinska P, Ziolkowski P, Hayee B, Liu Y, Han J, Tessitore A, Koth J, Bodmer WF, East JE, Bennett NC, Tomlinson I, Irshad S. Adult stem cell activity in naked mole rats for long-term tissue maintenance.  Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 20;14(1):8484. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-44138-6. PMID: 38123565

Wenger NS, Sanz Vidorreta FJ, Dudley MT, Walling AM, Hogarth M. Consequences of a Health System Not Knowing Which Patients Are Deceased - PubMed (nih.gov)  JAMA Intern Med. 2023 Dec 4:e236428. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6428. PMID: 38048124

Yousif ZK, Koola JD, Macedo E, Cerda J, Goldstein SL, Chakravarthi R, Lewington A, Selewski D, Zappitelli M, Cruz D, Tolwani A, Joy MS, Jha V, Ramachandran R, Ostermann M, Pandya B, Acharya A, Brophy P, Ponce D, Steinke J, Bouchard J, Irarrazabal CE, Irarrazabal R, Boltansky A, Askenazi D, Kolhe N, Claure-Del Granado R, Benador N, Castledine C, Davenport A, Barratt J, Bhandari S, Riley AA, Davis TK, Farmer C, Hogarth M, Thomas M, Murray PT, Robinson-Cohen C, Nicoletti P, Vaingankar S, Mehta R, Awdishu L.  Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Drug-Induced Acute Kidney Injury Cases.  Kidney Int Rep. 2023 Aug 14;8(11):2333-2344. doi: 10.1016/j.ekir.2023.07.037. eCollection 2023 Nov.  PMID: 38025217

Nguyen JP, Arthur TD, Fujita K, Salgado BM, Donovan MKR; iPSCORE Consortium; Matsui H, Kim JH, D'Antonio-Chronowska A, D'Antonio M, Frazer KA.
eQTL mapping in fetal-like pancreatic progenitor cells reveals early developmental insights into diabetes risk.  Nat Commun. 2023 Oct 30;14(1):6928. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42560-4. PMID: 37903777

Bruce LK, Kasl P, Soltani S, Viswanath VK, Hartogensis W, Dilchert S, Hecht FM, Chowdhary A, Anglo C, Pandya L, Dasgupta S, Altintas I, Gupta A, Mason AE, Smarr BL.

 Variability of temperature measurements recorded by a wearable device by biological sex.  Biol Sex Differ. 2023 Nov 1;14(1):76. doi: 10.1186/s13293-023-00558-z. PMID: 37915069

Boyle EA, Goldberg G, Schmok JC, Burgado J, Izidro Layng F, Grunwald HA, Balotin KM, Cuoco MS, Chang KC, Ecklu-Mensah G, Arakaki AKS, Ahmed N, Garcia Arceo X, Jagannatha P, Pekar J, Iyer M; DASL Alliance; Yeo GW.

Junior scientists spotlight social bonds in seminars for diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM.  PLoS One. 2023 Nov 2;18(11):e0293322. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293322. eCollection 2023. PMID: 37917746

Chen C, Lifset E, Han Y, Roy A, Hogarth M, Moore A, Farcas E, Weibel N.  Screen or No Screen? Lessons Learnt from a Real-World Deployment Study of Using Voice Assistants With and Without Touchscreen for Older Adults.  ASSETS '23: Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. doi.acm.org?doi=3597638.3608378.

Lifset ET, Charles K, Farcas E, Weibel N, Hogarth M, Chen C, Johnson JG, Draper M, Nguyen AL, Moore AA  Ascertaining Whether an Intelligent Voice Assistant Can Meet Older Adults' Health-Related Needs in the Context of a Geriatrics 5Ms Framework.  Gerontol Geriatr Med. 2023 Sep 30;9:23337214231201138. doi: 10.1177/23337214231201138. eCollection 2023 Jan-Dec. PMID: 37790195

Johnson B, Shuai Y, Schweinsberg J, Curtius K.   cloneRate: fast estimation of single-cell clonal dynamics using coalescent theory.  Bioinformatics. 2023 Sep 12:btad561. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btad561. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37699006

Classen DC, Longhurst CA, Davis T, Milstein JA, Bates DW.  Inpatient EHR User Experience and Hospital EHR Safety Performance.  JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Sep 5;6(9):e2333152. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.33152. PMID: 37695581

Le JP, Shashikumar SP, Malhotra A, Nemati S, Wardi G.  Making the Improbable Possible: Generalizing Models Designed for a Syndrome-Based, Heterogeneous Patient Landscape.  Crit Care Clin. 2023 Oct;39(4):751-768. doi: 10.1016/j.ccc.2023.02.003. Epub 2023 Apr 26. PMID: 37704338 Review.

Wu JH, Varkhedi V, Radha Saseendrakumar B, Acuff K, Weinreb RN, Baxter SL. Social and Healthcare Utilization Factors Associated With Ophthalmic Visit Non-adherence in Glaucoma: an All of Us study.  J Glaucoma. 2023 Aug 29. doi: 10.1097/IJG.0000000000002300. PMID: 37671531

Aronoff-Spencer E, Mazrouee S, Graham R, Handcock MS, Nguyen K, Nebeker C, Malekinejad M, Longhurst CA.  Exposure notification system activity as a leading indicator for SARS-COV-2 caseload forecasting.  PLoS One. 2023 Aug 18;18(8):e0287368. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287368. eCollection 2023. PMID: 37594936

Leggat-Barr K, Ryu R, Hogarth M, Stover-Fiscalini A, Veer LV', Park HL, Lewis T, Thompson C, Borowsky A, Hiatt RA, LaCroix A, Parker B, Madlensky L, Naeim A, Esserman L. Early Ascertainment of Breast Cancer Diagnoses Comparing Self-Reported Questionnaires and Electronic Health Record Data Warehouse: The WISDOM Study.  JCO Clin Cancer Inform. 2023 Aug;7:e2300019. doi: 10.1200/CCI.23.00019. PMID: 37607323

Aruljothy A, Singh S, Narula N, Moran GW, Vuyyuru SK, Hogan M, Zayadi A, MacDonald JK, Caron B, Danese S, Peyrin Biroulet L, Ma C, Jairath V.  Systematic review with meta-analysis: Medical therapies for treatment of ulcerative proctitis.   Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2023 Aug 17. doi: 10.1111/apt.17666. Online ahead of print.  PMID: 37589498 Review.

Kashani KB, Awdishu L, Bagshaw SM, Barreto EF, Claure-Del Granado R, Evans BJ, Forni LG, Ghosh E, Goldstein SL, Kane-Gill SL, Koola J, Koyner JL, Liu M, Murugan R, Nadkarni GN, Neyra JA, Ninan J, Ostermann M, Pannu N, Rashidi P, Ronco C, Rosner MH, Selby NM, Shickel B, Singh K, Soranno DE, Sutherland SM, Bihorac A, Mehta RL.  Digital health and acute kidney injury: consensus report of the 27th Acute Disease Quality Initiative workgroup.  Nat Rev Nephrol. 2023 Aug 14. doi: 10.1038/s41581-023-00744-7. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37580570 Review.

Acuff K, Radha Saseendrakumar B, Wu JH, Weinreb RN, Baxter SL.  Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Glaucoma Onset and Severity in A Diverse Nationwide Cohort in the United States.  J Glaucoma. 2023 Jul 18. doi: 10.1097/IJG.0000000000002261. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37523618

Tai-Seale M, Baxter S, Millen M, Cheung M, Zisook S, Çelebi J, Polston G, Sun B, Gross E, Helsten T, Rosen R, Clay B, Sinsky C, Ziedonis DM, Longhurst CA, Savides TJ. Association of physician burnout with perceived EHR work stress and potentially actionable factors.  J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2023 Jul 20:ocad136. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocad136. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37475168

Keeler Bruce L, Paul P, Kim KK, Kim J, Keegan THM, Hiatt RA, Ohno-Machado L; All of Us Research Program Investigators.  Family and personal history of cancer in the All of Us research program for precision medicine.  PLoS One. 2023 Jul 17;18(7):e0288496. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288496. eCollection 2023. PMID: 37459328

Bhanvadia S, Radha Saseendrakumar B, Guo J, Daniel M, Lander L, Baxter SL  Evaluation of Bias in Medical Student Clinical Clerkship Evaluations Using Natural Language Processing. Acad Med. 2022 Nov 1;97(11S):S154. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004807. Epub 2022 Oct 18. PMID: 37460500

Tavakoli K, Kalaw FGP, Bhanvadia S, Hogarth M, Baxter SL.  Concept Coverage Analysis of Ophthalmic Infections and Trauma among the Standardized Medical Terminologies SNOMED-CT, ICD-10-CM, and ICD-11.  Ophthalmol Sci. 2023 May 25;3(4):100337. doi: 10.1016/j.xops.2023.100337. eCollection 2023 Dec.  PMID: 37449050

El-Kareh R, Brenner DA, Longhurst CA  Developing a highly-reliable learning health system.  Learn Health Syst. 2022 Oct 27;7(3):e10351. doi: 10.1002/lrh2.10351. eCollection 2023 Jul. PMID: 37448457

Tully JL, Zhong W, Simpson S, Curran BP, Macias AA, Waterman RS, Gabriel RA. Machine Learning Prediction Models to Reduce Length of Stay at Ambulatory Surgery Centers Through Case Resequencing. J Med Syst. 2023 Jul 10;47(1):71. doi: 10.1007/s10916-023-01966-9. PMID: 37428267

Seng EC, Mehdipour S, Simpson S, Gabriel RA. Tracking persistent postoperative opioid use: a proof-of-concept study demonstrating a use case for natural language processing.  Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2023 Jul 6:rapm-2023-104629. doi: 10.1136/rapm-2023-104629. Online ahead of print.  PMID: 37419509

Vuyyuru SK, Solitano V, Hogan M, MacDonald JK, Zayadi A, Parker CE, Sands BE, Panaccione R, Narula N, Feagan BG, Singh S, Jairath V, Ma C. Efficacy and Safety of IL-12/23 and IL-23 Inhibitors for Crohn's Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.  Dig Dis Sci. 2023 Jun 28. doi: 10.1007/s10620-023-08014-z. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37378711

Lu B, Curtius K, Graham TA, Yang Z, Barnes CP.  CNETML: maximum likelihood inference of phylogeny from copy number profiles of multiple samples. Genome Biol. 2023 Jun 20;24(1):144. doi: 10.1186/s13059-023-02983-0. PMID: 37340508 

Talwar JV, Laub D, Pagadala MS, Castro A, Lewis M, Luebeck GE, Gorman BR, Pan C, Dong FN, Markianos K, Teerlink CC, Lynch J, Hauger R, Pyarajan S, Tsao PS, Morris GP, Salem RM, Thompson WK, Curtius K, Zanetti M, Carter H. Autoimmune alleles at the major histocompatibility locus modify melanoma susceptibility.  Am J Hum Genet. 2023 Jun 13:S0002-9297(23)00170-2. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2023.05.013. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37339630

Gabriel RA, Park BH, Mehdipour S, Bongbong DN, Simpson S, Waterman RS. Leveraging a Natural Language Processing Model (Transformers) on Electronic Medical Record Notes to Classify Persistent Opiod Use After Surgery.  2023 Jun 20. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000006579. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37339081 No abstract available. 

Ayers JW, Zhu Z, Poliak A, Leas EC, Dredze M, Hogarth M, Smith DM. Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Responses to Public Health Questions.  JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Jun 1;6(6):e2317517. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.17517. PMID: 37285160

 Wu JH, Radha Saseendrakumar B, Moghimi S, Sidhu S, Kamalipour A, Weinreb RN, Baxter SL. Heliyon. Epidemiology and factors associated with cannabis use among patients with glaucoma in the All of Us Research Program.  2023 Apr 25;9(5):e15811. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15811. eCollection 2023 May. PMID: 37215923 Free PMC article.

Dameff C, Tully J, Chan TC, Castillo EM, Savage S, Maysent P, Hemmen TM, Clay BJ, Longhurst CA. Ransomware Attack Associated With Disruptions at Adjacent Emergency Departments in the US.  JAMA Netw Open. 2023 May 1;6(5):e2312270. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.12270. PMID: 37155166

Hogarth M, John D, Li Y, Wang-Rodriguez J, Chakladar J, Li WT, Mehta SR, Jain S, Ongkeko WM.  Clinical Characteristics and Comorbidities associated with SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection in the California Healthcare Systems. Am J Med Sci. 2023 May 3:S0002-9629(23)01166-7. doi: 10.1016/j.amjms.2023.04.019. Online ahead of print. PMID: 37146904 

Lam JY, Richardson A, Kanegaye JT, Tremoulet AH, Shimizu C, Stadnick NA, Burns JC, Nemati S, Gardiner MA Implementation of KIDMATCH: A Clinical Decision Support Tool for Diagnosing Pediatric Patients with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome and Kawasaki Disease.  Lam JY, AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2023 Apr 29;2022:653-661. eCollection 2022. PMID: 37128449

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