Medicine and human health are becoming increasingly data-rich and data driven. The University of Washington continues to grow as an international leader in artificial intelligence, medicine, training at all levels, and biomedical research.

Established in 2021, the Institute of Medical Data Science (IMDS) is an important strategic step toward becoming a national and global leader in this space jointly between the Schools of Medicine and Public Health and the College of Engineering, including the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering.

The IMDS unifies our medical research, technology innovation, and public health community around shared goals and provides the collective wisdom to become a global leader in AI and health. The IMDS fits into the University community’s academic mission by leveraging our strengths in data science, the health sciences, and engineering.

Our Vision

As a joint collaboration between the schools and colleges, the IMDS is building a cross-disciplinary ecosystem of faculty and trainees aimed at improving health and healthcare through data.

The overarching goal of the Institute is to implement AI and machine learning into healthcare and to study it. The IMDS specifically aims to achieve six goals through research, education and application:

• To generate and collect rich, ethically sourced, and curated datasets suitable for AI in medical data science
• To develop novel AI and data science methods in medical data science
• To overcome regulatory, ethical, clinical, operational and other hurdles to implement AI in practice
• To study the downstream effects of operational AI over time
• To investigate new data modalities using AI across a broad spectrum of conditions or diseases including biotechnology, genetic, imaging, behavioral, social determinants of health, and environmental determinants of health
• To improve patient health, provider satisfaction, and healthcare operations in the Pacific Northwest region using advanced data