Duke School of Medicine’s Dean Klotman recently announced key leadership appointments to address the rapid growth in and importance of harnessing health data as a tool. These appointments will help to align talent and resources across Duke University and Duke Health and improve access to data and state-of-the-art technology for all Duke researchers. Two of these leaders have a direct and strategic link to new and ongoing initiatives within the Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).
Michael Pencina, PhD, Vice Dean for Data Science and Information Technology for the School of Medicine, will also assume the role of Director of Duke AI Health. Designed as a multidisciplinary initiative, AI Health intends to unlock the enormous opportunity to spur collaborations that will leverage knowledge and expertise from across campus. In Dr. Pencina’s role as vice dean and new role as AI Health director, he will partner with Richard Shannon, MD, Chief Quality Officer for Duke Health; Ebony Boulware, MD, Director of Duke’s CTSI; and Sandy Williams, MD, interim Vice President of Research and Innovation for Duke University, to develop and implement a health data science strategy for Duke.
Walter Kwiatek has served in several enterprise-wide IT leaderships and will now focus his expertise on three key Duke Health strategic programs:
- CTSI: Clinical Translational Science Institute-Informatics
- One of the key strategic pillars within CTSI focused on data collection, governance, analysis, and dissemination to create best practices, and build transparent processes that promote ethical and equitable data science.
- FCAP: Federated Clinical Access Platform
- New extensive novel data platform containing Duke’s de-identified, highly curated, bio-medical data focused on accelerating research and improving care.
- CACHE: Collaborative to Advance Clinical Health Equity
- Duke initiative designed to enable clinicians to view care delivery through a health equity lens and use Duke’s quality management system to change care practices to eliminate disparities and improve quality of care.
Together, these innovative leaders will lead the Data Science pillar within the CTSI and work to guide the CTSI and Duke through the evolving and groundbreaking fields of ethical and equitable data science, informatics, and IT.