Lecture Overview

The U.S. healthcare system continues to face significant challenges, including rising costs, variable quality, and an under-realized return on substantial investment. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence are rapidly reshaping industries and hold growing promise for healthcare.

AI is already being applied to tasks such as:

• Identifying patients at risk of sepsis.
• Predicting treatment responses using pharmacogenomic data.
• Forecasting patient outcomes.
• Generating clinical content and insights.
• Improving operational functions such as scheduling and prior authorization.

Despite this promise, adoption in healthcare remains slow, in part due to the sensitivity of clinical encounters and the complexity of healthcare data.

This lecture will explore the Observer Project, an initiative designed to create an open resource that integrates data and contextual information to support research at the intersection of medicine, engineering, and health systems science. Dr. Johnson will discuss the development of this resource and share early findings from ongoing work.