Measuring the health of Chicago through better data
Abel Kho
Northwestern University; Director, Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine; Professor, Medicine, Preventive Medicine
Seminar Date: April 1, 2026 11:30 - 12:30pm
Location: University of Chicago, Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, Room 1103
Title: Measuring the health of Chicago through better data
Abstract: Measuring the health of populations requires attention to community values, data governance, regulatory requirements, and technical capacity. This talk will describe the 20 year journey to measuring the health of Chicago, from widespread adoption of Electronic Health Records, to development and deployment of novel Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, and more recent efforts to leverage AI tools for population level data integration and analysis.
Bio: Abel Kho, MD, MS, FACMI is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, where he serves as the founding director of both the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IAIM) and the founding Co-Director of the newly launched Northwestern Network for Collaborative Intelligence (NNCI). An internationally recognized expert in health informatics, his research focuses on integrating diverse data sources — such as electronic health records and geospatial data — to improve computational phenotyping and population health. Dr. Kho has led major regional and national initiatives, including serving as the overall Principal Investigator for the Chicago Area Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN).
Sponsored by:
Section of Biomedical Data Science, Department of Medicine
Data Science Institute
Center for Translational Data Science
Center for Computational Medicine and Clinical Artificial Intelligence
