Myths vs. Facts: Making Sense of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation | The Brink

It's Time For A New Medical Specialty In Asynchronous Care

By Muthu Alagappan, Rishi Khakhkhar, and Ben Kornitzer

Oct. 4, 2024

Alagappan is an internal medicine physician and the founder and CEO of Counsel Health, a virtual medical practice specializing in messaging-based care. Khakhkhar is a practicing emergency medicine physician and the founding medical director of Counsel Health. Kornitzer is an internal medicine physician and a strategic adviser to Counsel Health.

As primary care physicians, we see a scene play out almost daily. A patient is sitting in front of us, explaining her symptoms: She could have difficulty breathing, stress at home, fatigue. We know there is nothing more important than being fully present.

However, our minds and eyes keep darting to the computer screen and the growing inbox of messages from other patients: "I forgot my Lipitor for a week, should I double up tomorrow?" "I've had a cough since starting that new medication," "I'm traveling to Vietnam next week, do I need any vaccines?"

Today, the fastest-growing care setting isn't the hospital or home — it's the mobile phone. Google now receives more than 1 billion health-related searches every day, and patient messages for medical advice have increased sixfold in the past decade. The explosion in patient messaging is a clear sign that patients want more access to information about their health, despite the long wait times and often unclear responses. 

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6 Children's Hospitals Leading AI

As the pediatric healthcare landscape continues to evolve, a select group of children's hospitals is leading the charge in integrating artificial intelligence into their clinical and operational frameworks.

These institutions are pioneering innovative AI projects that enhance diagnostics, optimize patient care, and streamline administrative processes. By leveraging advanced technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing, these hospitals are not only improving patient outcomes but also setting new standards for how AI can be utilized in the healthcare sector.

Becker's Healthcare, in partnership with the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego, has compiled a list of leading U.S. Children's hospitals that are pioneering the use of AI.

Editor's Note: We spotlight these top hospitals for their strong leadership, outcomes-focused research, as well as strategic investments. Explore the list below, organized alphabetically by state, to find our top selections.

1. California - Stanford Children's Health

Leadership

Natalie Pageler, MD, CMIO and founding Division chief of clinical informatics in the department of pediatrics. She led the organization's transition to Epic's electronic health record and developed innovative clinical decision support tools that enhance care quality and efficiency. Additionally, she helps shape the national curriculum for clinical informatics and serves as associate program director of Stanford's clinical informatics fellowship program.

Tanya Townsend, chief information and digital officer. Ms. Townsend, who has extensive experience in healthcare information technology, leads Stanford Children's digital transformation and technology initiatives. She also oversees an award-winning team to develop enterprise resource planning systems, drive operational excellence, and guide strategic planning.

Case studies

2. Massachusetts - Boston Children's Hospital

Boston Children's is ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. It is home to the world's largest pediatric research enterprise, and it is the leading recipient of pediatric research funding from the National Institutes of Health. It is the primary pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School. The nonprofit hospital treats more children with rare diseases and complex conditions than any other hospital.

Leadership

John Brownstein, MD, chief innovation officer, leads the AI strategy. His research has played a crucial role in disease control and prevention, enhancing public health practices and engaging the community in health matters. He is a pioneer in "digital epidemiology," leveraging diverse digital data sources to gain insights into population health. Dr. Brownstein's work is widely recognized for its translational impact, particularly through the development and application of artificial intelligence, data mining, and citizen science. His innovative platforms, such as Vaccines.Gov, Global.Health, and HealthMap, serve millions each year and have earned accolades from the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. His research has been essential in the early detection, surveillance, and response to major disease outbreaks, including H1N1 in 2009, Cholera in 2010, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015, and COVID-19 in 2019.

Jen Magaziner, vice president of digital health. She collaborates with leaders to enhance patient care through digital solutions across the healthcare journey, from remote to in-person services. Ms. Magaziner is passionate about reproductive and child health, and mobile apps that empower healthcare workers in developing regions, improving access to primary and prenatal care. She's also interested in innovating breast pump technology.

Heather Nelson, senior vice president and CIO. Throughout her 25-year healthcare career, she has led talented teams in large integrated healthcare delivery systems as well as the academic medical center environment developing, implementing and enhancing technology solutions and capabilities for our patients, physicians, and clinicians. Ms. Nelson led the rollout of a hybrid 5G network at Boston Children's in summer 2024. The technology is being deployed alongside the organization's transition to a unified EHR system.

Ken Mandl, MD, director of the computational health informatics program and Donald A.B. Lindberg Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. His work at the intersection of population and individual health significantly shapes the field of biomedical informatics. A pioneer in real-time biosurveillance, Dr. Mandl has long championed patient participation in data production and access, designing early personal health and participatory surveillance systems. He developed SMART on FHIR, enabling universal health IT apps that create an "app store for health." His influence on the 21st Century Cures Act led to federal regulations supporting SMART interfaces, ensuring standardized access to individual and population data without special effort. Dr. Mandl also leads the federated Genomic Information Commons across nine leading children's hospitals and directs the Boston Children's Hospital PrecisionLink Biobank for Health Discovery.

Dinesh Rai, MD, inaugural prompt engineer at Boston Children's Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator. He leads AI projects in healthcare, focusing on enhancing clinical decision-making, improving patient care, and supporting medical research. Dr. Rai collaborates with researchers and clinicians to identify key healthcare needs and translate them into effective AI solutions. He also develops and implements natural language processing solutions, emphasizing large language models and fine-tuning techniques.

Case studies

3. Ohio - Cincinnati Children's

Cincinnati Children's Medical Center is a nonprofit pediatric health system and a leader in research and education, consistently ranked among America's best children's hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. It is also a top recipient of NIH pediatric research grants. Partnering with skilled clinical staff, the hospital's scientists conduct basic and translational research on a range of common and rare diseases, exploring genetic and molecular causes, running clinical trials, and conducting long-term outcome studies. Cincinnati Children's also has a large AI imaging research center.

Leadership

Tony Johnston, CIO. Mr. Johnston co-led the selection, installation, and implementation of the integrated EHR and designed the data center supporting the technology infrastructure across all Cincinnati Children's locations. He also played a key role in implementing the telehealth program and recently co-created the health system's augmented reality/virtual reality digital experience lab. Mr. Johnston was named one of the top CIO's to know in 2024 by Becker's Healthcare.

Todd Ponsky, MD, chief innovation officer. He leads the Innovation Ventures program, which assists investigators in navigating the intricate process of bringing ideas and innovations to the commercial market – from big data and analytics to imaging science, sensory systems and more.

Bhavna Mehta, assistant vice president of data and analytics. She heads the hospital's data and analytics strategy, which includes the data governance program, data literacy, data management, business intelligence, and AI and analytics.

Case studies

Investments

Cincinnati Children's has launched start-ups in the AI space.

Launched $10 million mental health initiative leveraging AI

4. Ohio - Nationwide Children's Hospital

Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the largest and most comprehensive pediatric hospitals and research institutes in the United States. With more than 1.8 million patient visits each year, it is the nation's third largest pediatric hospital. The hospital has a Research Institute dedicated to developing promising new technologies to advance the practice of pediatric healthcare, as well as an IT Research and Innovation division, which fosters collaboration and innovation of impactful health IT solutions, combining data analytics, technological intervention, and user experience designs.

Leadership

Peter White, inaugural chief data sciences officer of the Abigail Wexner Research Institute. He leads biomedical data science initiatives and is responsible for developing a comprehensive data science strategy at AWRI. This includes integrating and analyzing diverse big data sources, such as genomic and electronic health record data, while applying AI and machine learning to gain insights for diagnosing and treating pediatric diseases. He oversees a team of data scientists, software developers, cloud engineers, data architects, analysts, and other professionals to support these efforts.

Denise Zabawsk, CIO, has led the implementation of multiple EHR systems, ERP systems, two new data center construction projects and supported the construction of many new facilities.

Emre Sezgin, principal investigator at the Center for Biobehavioral Health. He leads the Intelligence Futures Lab, which has several focus areas, including developing digital health tools, methods, and multimodal systems, including mobile apps, wearables, voice assistants, chatbots. Mr. Sezgin's research interests include implementation of multimodal, intelligent and connected digital health ecosystems for patients and families, improving remote care and patient generated health data, promoting digital equity and inclusion, understanding digital behavior and engagement among patient populations. He has experience with using digital health technologies including mobile apps, wearables, sensors, voice technologies and conversational artificial intelligence.

Case studies

Investments

$1 million donation from Amazon to advance care and research

AI spinout acquired for $203 million

$100 million commitment from Nationwide Foundation for initiatives including advancing cutting-edge treatment and discovery through integrated clinical care and research and creating a national model for expanding access to behavioral health services.

5. Pennsylvania - Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Founded in 1855, the nonprofit Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is the first hospital exclusively for children in the U.S. It focuses on exceptional patient care, training pediatric professionals, and groundbreaking research, making significant contributions to child health worldwide. Its extensive CHOP Care Network offers advanced care through over 50 locations, including primary care practices, specialty centers, urgent care, and a dedicated pediatric emergency department in King of Prussia.

Leadership

Shakeeb Akhter is the senior vice president and chief digital and information officer. He oversees digital and technology services, leveraging his deep understanding of healthcare, technology, analytics and artificial intelligence to drive digital innovation.

Hojjat Salmasian, MD, vice president and chief data and analytics officer. He leads the analytics services, data platforms, engineering, data literacy and governance, and data science teams that make up the Data and Analytics (DnA) team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He is a primary care physician and medical informaticist, as well as a fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Abdul Tariq, PhD, associate vice president data science. His work portfolio encompasses computational and predictive medicine, population health economics, and medical decision-making. He is an expert in leading teams to develop and deploy real-world machine learning algorithms to improve healthcare.

Susan Sotardi, MD, director, radiology informatics and artificial intelligence. She leads the CHOP Program for Artificial Intelligence in Pediatric Imaging, whose aim is to design and implement innovative machine learning tools to improve clinical pediatric radiology. She is also a pediatric neuroradiologist and body radiologist, and currently a research fellow in machine learning.

Case studies

Investments

$1 million donation from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support pediatric causes and advance AI and cloud innovation.

6. Washington, D.C. - Children's National Hospital

The nonprofit Children's National Hospital is ranked No. 5 nationally by U.S. News & World Report and leads the Mid-Atlantic in neonatology, cancer, and neurology/neurosurgery. The hospital has top 10 rankings in all specialties, including nephrology, orthopedics, pulmonology, and diabetes/endocrinology, reflecting our commitment to children's health.

Home to the Children's National Research Institute and the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, the hospital secures over 70% of its research funding from federal sources, with 60% from the National Institutes of Health.

Leadership

Alda Mizaku, vice president and chief data and intelligence officer, leads the hospital's enterprise data, analytics, and AI strategy. She also oversees a center of excellence for data management and governance, promoting data-driven decision-making and optimizing investments in modern data and AI technologies.

Marius George Linguaru, MD, professor and chair of research and innovation. He is principal investigator in the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, where he directs the Precision Medical Imaging Group. Dr. Linguraru is a global leader in using quantitative imaging and machine learning to enhance children's health. His team leverages AI and digital innovations to improve healthcare access and understand rare and newborn diseases. Their efforts enable faster care delivery, treatment evaluation, and complication prevention, positioning Children's National as a leader in pediatric AI for equitable care.

Case studies

Investments

$1 million investment from AWS to accelerate discoveries for kids using innovative technologies like cloud computing and AI.

The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation received a $1.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to boost MRI access globally for neonatal health.

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