Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our lives. In the process, it also promises to transform medicine. With the unceasing growth in medical knowledge and new opportunities to prevent or treat disease, doctors are being driven to ever narrower and siloed specialization. Concurrently, the increasing costs of healthcare, scarcity of resources (including primary care doctors) and challenges to providing equal access to quality care are placing severe strains on healthcare systems throughout the world. These two trends make medicine a discipline ripe for advancement through the integration of AI into every aspect practice and research. By harnessing its power, researchers, clinicians, and patients can analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented speed and accuracy. However, addressing the unique complexity of healthcare and the high stakes involved requires overcoming substantial technical, computational and societal obstacles.
The AI in Medicine PhD Track administered by the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at Harvard Medical School is designed to confront these challenges by preparing the next generation of leaders at the intersection of artificial intelligence and medicine. The program’s mission is to train exceptional computational students, harnessing large-scale biomedical data and cutting-edge AI methods to create new technologies and clinically impactful research that transform medicine worldwide, increasing both the quality and equity of health outcomes.
This groundbreaking training program transcends traditional boundaries between fields such as statistics, computer science, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, epidemiology, and clinical medicine, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. Students will acquire the skills to build tools and infrastructure that improve individual and population health, addressing the needs of patients, providers, and clinical care systems.
Unique to our program, in partnership with the Boston area’s renowned hospitals and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), trainees will enrich their applied understanding of the challenges and opportunities for AI in the healthcare ecosystem by taking clinical coursework at Harvard Medical School and performing hospital rotations alongside medical students and other PhD trainees from Harvard and MIT.
Visit the APPLY page for information on applying to the program and to read our Frequently Asked Questions.