VUMC DBMI's Brad Malin & Team to Lead AI Ethics Core for New Bridge2AI Program

Faculty members at Vanderbilt University Medical Center will have a central role in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program called Bridge to Artificial Intelligence, or Bridge2AI.

The four-year, $104 million program is designed to accelerate use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in biomedical and behavioral research. VUMC researchers will lead and comprise the greater part of an AI research ethics core for Bridge2AI, with VUMC receiving $5.2 million over four years to support the work of the ethics core.

“Health and health care stand to benefit from advances in artificial intelligence, but those benefits will only be fully realized when the data utilized is collected in a societally responsible manner,” said Bradley Malin, Accenture Professor and professor of Biomedical Informatics. “The Bridge2AI program will work to ensure that ethical issues are front and center right from the outset of the program.”

Malin will lead the ethics core with Ellen Wright Clayton, MD, JD, the Craig-Weaver Professor Pediatrics and professor of Law; Xiaoqian Jiang, PhDprofessor and director of the Center for Secure Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center; and Camille Nebeker, EdD, MS, associate professor at the Wertheim School of Public Health at the University of California, San Diego.

Laurie Novak, PhD, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC, will serve as co-leader for two of the ethics core’s four planned buckets of work. Other VUMC faculty on tap for the ethics core include, from the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Toufeeq Ahmed, PhD, Daniel Fabbri, PhD, Paul Harris, PhD, Yaa Kumah-Crystal, MD, Michael Matheny, MD, Colin Walsh, MD, Martin Were, MD, and Zhijun Yin, PhD, and from the Department of Biostatistics, Chris Lindsell, PhD.

Click to read more in the VUMC Reporter