At least 18 of the 30 Duke University scientists in this year's list of most highly cited researchers worldwide have appointments in the School of Medicine.

Duke University School of Medicine welcomed new faculty with a behind-the-scenes look at the School's research core facilities. 

Clinicians, researchers, and educators at Duke University School of Medicine and across Duke Health are using artificial intelligence (AI) to schedule surgeries more efficiently, give students immediate feedback on academic writing, and help speed up drug discovery. Duke is at the leading edge of efforts to maximize the benefits of AI in health care while putting effective guardrails in place to minimize potential risks. “We have a huge potential to reduce physician burden, increase health care efficiency, and improve the patient experience,” said Michael Pencina, PhD, director of Duke AI Health and chief data scientist for Duke Health. “But we need to be very intentional about what AI will be doing.”

Scientists and clinicians at the Duke University School of Medicine have discovered new details about how lung tissue heals after injury caused by toxins such as air pollution or cigarette smoke.

In honor of their deep connection to Duke, Krista Patterson AB’03, JD’06, LLM’06, and Jonathan Wigser, MBA’94, have made a planned gift commitment of their estate to be split equally between the School of Medicine, Duke Cancer Institute, Duke Children’s, and Fuqua School of Business.

School of Medicine faculty are using the capabilities of ChatGPT, a chatbot that answers questions and generates text using natural language processing, to improve students’ learning experiences and assist with their own research. At the same time, they caution that monitoring and fact-checking the system are essential.

The internet, pervasive social media, and round-the-clock news sites have put a world’s worth of knowledge literally at our fingertips: with a click or two you can summon vast amounts of information about almost anything. Unfortunately, a lot of it is wrong. Duke researchers are working to combat false health claims.

Erich Huang, PhD’02, MD’03, HS’03-’08, is head of clinical informatics at Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences. He has been a pathfinder since transitioning in 2016 from clinical care to biomedical informatics and later directing Duke Forge, an initiative to build a data science culture and infrastructure focused on actionable health data science across Duke University. In 2020 he was selected as Duke Health’s Chief Data Officer for Quality. Now the head of clinical informatics at Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences, his vision for the health care landscape remains centered on wielding artificial intelligence as a tool, not a replacement for the human touch.

William Stead, AB’70, MD’74, HS’73-’77, is the McKesson Foundation Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University and is one of the founders of the field of biomedical informatics. In the 1970s, first as a medical student and then while a nephrology fellow and member of the faculty at Duke, Stead worked with Ed Hammond, BSEE’57, PhD’67, director of the Duke Center for Health Informatics, and others to build The Medical Record, one of the first practical electronic medical record systems.

The Physician Assistant Program touches base with the foundation of the PA profession: Veterans.