Informatics in the Round Kevin B. Johnson, MD, MS

What happens when you bring together three previous heads of biomedical informatics departments? A lot of reflection, storytelling, and joking around! In this episode, we bring together guests who have previously run informatics departments and are still involved in various ways, whether through research, teaching, or creating content to educate the public. We get the inside scoop into all the administrative responsibilities of these department chairs, their favorite parts of the job, and how they hope to see the field respond to modern technological developments like AI.
We had some fantastic guests on this episode.  Dr. William (Bill) Hersh is a Professor in the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Hersh served as the inaugural Chair of DMICE from its inception in 2003 through 2022. He also served as Director of OHSU's Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program, from its inception in 1996 through 2023. Dr. Hersh also conceptualized and implemented the first offering of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 10x10 ("ten by ten") program; his course has been completed by more than 3000 individuals since 2005. In addition, he serves as Editor of the textbook, Health Informatics: Practical Guide, 8th Edition. Since stepping down as department chair, Dr. Hersh has maintained his research and teaching activities, and writes the Informatics Professor blog.
Dr. George Hripcsak is the Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor at Columbia University's Department of Biomedical Informatics. He led Columbia University's informatics department for 15 years. He currently leads the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics coordinating center, which organizes the health records of almost one billion patients. He has authored over 350 scientific papers, serves as the PI for Columbia's recruitment center for the All of Us precision medicine program, and focuses his research on developing the next generation of health record systems.
Finally, our host turned guest for this episode! Dr. Kevin Johnson is the David L. Cohen University Professor of Pediatrics, Biomedical Informatics, and Science Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Before Penn, he was the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University from 2012-2022. He currently researches how to integrate advanced technology and artificial intelligence with health documentation systems. And, of course, he loves sharing informatics with a wider audience whether through his children's books, his documentary projects, or this podcast!
Thanks to our host Harris Bland and our production assistant Ellie Shuert for leading us through this discussion. We loved reminiscing together, and we hope you enjoy getting an inside look into informatics departments!
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and TikTok accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
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How does social media challenge or reinforce our own biases? On this episode, we sat down with the University of Pennsylvania's Desmond Upton Patton to discuss his research on social media and adolescence. We talk about the many roles social media has for young people and how they have taken advantage of social media as a storytelling mechanism and a tool for navigating safety. We discuss how social media can also be reductionist, reinforce negative stereotypes, and even perpetuate misinformation, revealing the flaws in AI and similar technologies. Desmond talks us through all these facets of social media in relation to his work and challenges us to think about what it would look like to recognize social media as increasingly integrated into our reality.
We were so excited to have Dr. Desmond Upton Patton with us for this episode. Desmond is not only a great friend, but an incredible scholar. As a social worker, researcher, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Desmond has published groundbreaking research on the linkage between grief and aggressive behavior on social media platforms, and now his research focuses on the topics such AI, social media, machine learning, empathy, and race with the goal to create unbiased and culturally conscious algorithms. In addition, he serves on the research and safety advisory boards of Twitter, Spotify, and TikTok, and he has been chosen as part of the inaugural cohort of Obama Foundation Leaders for his research. Now, he is the director for the research initiative known as SAFELab at the Annenberg School for Communication, a project we will hear more about in this episode!
We also had with us songwriters Alissa Abeler and Hannah Smith from the Americana duo The Daily Fare. They shared amazing insights not just on their own experiences with social media, but also on songwriting and the storytelling process.
We were so thankful to have this group of people in discussion with us, and we hope you enjoy the episode!
Mentioned in this episode: 
-Sing Me a Story
-AIDS Memorial Quilt
-Follow SAFELab on Twitter
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Instagram: @infointhernd
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Website: https://www.kevinbjohnsonmd.net/podcast

Is every clinical trial created equal? In this episode, we learn some shocking information about the proportions of populations normally included in clinical trials. We specifically cover recent treatments for Alzheimer’s disease to discuss how we may have failed to consider minority populations in our research and how we can use precision medicine to create more equitable clinical trials. We also discuss how we can redevelop trust in scientific institutions in the wake of the pandemic and how health professionals can adapt their research techniques to include data from historically underrepresented populations.
We had a wonderful cast join us for this episode. We had Stephanie Monroe, Vice President and Senior Advisor of Health Equity and Access for UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, a national advocacy group that aims to diversify the movement to cure Alzheimer’s disease. After working on Capitol Hill and holding the position of Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights for three years, Stephanie’s work has focused on raising awareness about the disparate impact of Alzheimer’s disease on communities of color and women.
We also had Consuelo Wilkins, Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean of Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence, and a Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and works with the All of Us Research Program, a national precision medicine project. She is also the Principal Investigator of three NIH-funded centers which aim to decrease health disparities for communities of color and create new approaches to recruiting marginalized communities for clinical trials. 
This conversation was so fun and yielded so many valuable insights regarding how we can create more equitable research for communities of color. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Interested in how misinformation circulates? Listen to our previous podcast episode with guest Evan Thornburg.
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Instagram: @infointhernd
Twitter: @infointhernd 
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Website: https://www.kevinbjohnsonmd.net/podcast

In this episode, we tackle an all-too-familiar topic: misinformation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how technology and social media can be used to both spread health information awareness and popularize misinformation. The question remains: in the age of technology, how can we be sure about the validity of the information we are receiving online, and how can we all be vigilant against the spread of misinformation?
To help us, we had the wonderful Evan Thornburg join us for today's podcast. Evan is a bioethicist and health equity officer for the City of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Health. In the past, they've also worked in the Philadelphia Mayor's Office as Deputy Director of LGBT. After completing a Master's of Arts in Urban Bioethics at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine and writing their thesis on the spread of misinformation, Evan took to TikTok, utilizing the platform to share their knowledge about bioethics, comment on current health news, and challenge the online community to be discerning about how they absorb and converse about health information. You can find Evan on TikTok at EVN the (Bio) Ethicist.
We loved talking with Evan, and we hope you come out of this episode with some practical tools to help you filter the information you see on social media!
Learn more about ethical research conduct from government websites such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association. 
Check out what the American Board of Internal Medicine has to say about the rise of misinformation:
-https://blog.abim.org/an-update-on-our-efforts-to-address-medical-misinformation/
-https://blog.abim.org/new-paper-recommends-creating-a-durably-funded-infrastructure-for-media-monitoring-and-effective-coordinated-responses-to-medical-misinformation/
Learn more about the work Desmond Upton Patton is doing with SAFELab here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/research/centers/safe-lab
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Instagram: @infointhernd
Twitter: @infointhernd 
Threads: @infointhernd
TikTok: @infointhernd 
Facebook: @Informatics in the Round 
Website: https://www.kevinbjohnsonmd.net/podcast

In this episode, we look at the genetic basis for different psychiatric disorders, the interconnectedness of psychological and physical symptoms, and how they apply to our ongoing conversation regarding health equity. For this episode, we welcomed back some of our previous guests:
Lea Davis Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Division of Genetic Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her work explores the genomic architecture of complex traits, defined as the type, frequency, and function of DNA variants en masse that contribute to the genetic predisposition of a given trait.
We also welcomed back the talented Jane Bach, a successful songwriter from Nashville, to help us dissect how exactly gene inheritance works and share her stories and music with us! Ellie Shuert, our new production assistant from the University of Pennsylvania, also joined in for the discussion. They both made our conversation so lively and fun, and they really helped us dig deep into the fundamentals of genetics and the importance of listening intentionally to patients' stories and symptoms.
We have new social media pages! Make sure to follow our new Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Threads accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. Thanks for listening!
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In this episode, we talk a bit about the recent advances in large language models, also known as GPT/ChatGPT.  We have two wonderful guests:
Christoph U. Lehmann, M.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics, Population and Data Sciences, and Bioinformatics at UT Southwestern, where he directs the Clinical Informatics Center. In addition, Chris was the first chair of the Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Subcommittee for Clinical Informatics. Dr. Lehmann’s research focuses on improving clinical information technology and clinical decision support.
Yaa Kumah-Crystal Crystal MD, MPH, MS is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Yaa’s research focuses on studying communication and documentation in healthcare and developing strategies to improve workflow and patient care delivery. Yaa works in the Innovations Portfolio at Vanderbilt HealthIT on the development of Voice Assistant Technologies to improve the usability of the EHR through natural language communication.
Chris and Yaa bring very complementary perspectives to the topic of our future. Yaa's research focuses on how we can innovate to improve the use of technology in medicine. Chris is also internationally known as the Editor in Chief of Applied Clinical Informatics,
as well as one of the leaders in our clinical informatics board certification work.  He is intimately familiar with the potential uses of this technology beyond clinical care, but, as an actively practicing neonatologist, more than holds his own when it comes to how medicine can benefit from--or be harmed by--new technologies such as AI. 
We leave it to you to decide both which direction we're heading, and how we can put up the guardrails to keep us on the preferred track. And, I suspect this won't be our last discussion about AI in Medicine!----more----
By the way, in case you want to learn more about topics we brought up in this episode:
Belmont principles include autonomy

Beneficence:  AI is designed explicitly to be helpful to people, who use it or on whom it is used, and to reflect the ideals of compassionate, kind, and considerate human behavior


Autonomy:  Context AI: operates without human oversight.  Context Ethics: “protecting the autonomy of all people and treating them with courtesy and respect and facilitating informed consent”
Nonmaleficence:  “Do No Harm”.  Every reasonable effort shall be made to avoid, prevent, and minimize harm or damage to any stakeholder.
Justice:  Equity in representation in and access to AI, data, and the benefits of AI.  Fair access to redress and remedy be available in the event of harm resulting from the use of AI.  Affirmative use of AI to support social justice

Artists and AI:  
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisstokelwalker/art-subreddit-illustrator-ai-art-controversy
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-image-generators-artists-copying-style-thousands-images-2022-10
TikTok voiceover person:   https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701167/bev-standing-tiktok-lawsuit-settles-text-to-speech-voice
GPT and test performance:  https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/tech/chatgpt-passes-exams/index.html, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.05.23286533v1.full
Deepfake concerns: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2019/09/03/a-voice-deepfake-was-used-to-scam-a-ceo-out-of-243000/?sh=292f03982241
https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/protect-yourself-from-deep-fake
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/deepfake-porn-ai-mr-deep-fake-economy-google-visa-mastercard-download-rcna75071
MidJourney and bias:
https://uxdesign.cc/midjourney-is-incredible-but-you-can-see-there-are-definite-existing-biases-in-its-dataset-4b1131fb0533.
https://nftnow.com/features/the-objectification-of-women-in-ai-art/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.11261
Amazon AI Tool Bias: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/am