About the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science

What We Do


The Center for Healthcare Delivery Science's programs and activities are available to all clinical investigators, research staff and operational leaders at BIDMC. One of the Center’s highest priorities is building the research infrastructure and tools required to support the Center’s programs in each of the focus areas described below. In addition, the Center brings together core faculty and senior advisors with deep expertise in healthcare delivery science, emerging research methods, biostatistics and epidemiology, and staff expertise in project management and data management. These faculty and staff experts serve as mentors to Innovation grant awardees and other junior investigators. The Center’s management of InSIGHT Core is an important part of this infrastructure.

The contribution of machine learning to clinical care led by Steve Horng, MD. Machine learning has the potential to capitalize on the data-rich electronic health record to improve care by enabling risk predictions and insights. Our work focuses on using new data science methods to leverage this opportunity to help rather than hinder the bedside clinician; meaningfully inform and change care rather than repackaging information available in other ways; and address head-on embedded inequities in the care delivered to different classes and groups of patients.  

 Achieving equity in healthcare delivery led by Chloe Zera, MD, MPH.  

This work aims to promote health equity at BIDMC by facilitating action-oriented research focused on clinical operations and care delivery with broad applicability across specialties. As part of this effort, Center Director Jennifer Stevens convened a group with representation from key departments at BIDMC to identify needed infrastructure, tools for researchers, and criteria for evaluating health equity considerations in research projects and care delivery. The group’s highest priority was to improve the accuracy of data collection critical to designing interventions. It achieved this objective by identifying critical gaps that exist in the areas of racial, ethnic and language data, which is a first step to ensuring that interventions can be successful. 

Achieving high value care led by Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil.
Value has been defined as the measure of benefit to patients/cost. The Center’s work advances the development and testing of innovative care models that seek to deliver high value, equitable, and patient-centered healthcare. This effort focuses on clinical operations and care delivery across all clinical departments and care settings. 

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