The Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP) at Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School (HMS), is a leader in biomedical informatics. Founded in 1994, CHIP is uniquely embedded within a leading pediatric hospital, offering exceptional opportunities for collaboration with clinical leaders and direct access to vast clinical, genomic, and population-level datasets. These resources enable CHIP to develop innovative solutions that address real-world clinical challenges and enhance patient outcomes.
CHIP operates at the intersection of medicine, public health, and computation, driving the transformation of care delivery. Our multidisciplinary team, composed of experts in medicine, computer science, data science, and epidemiology, focuses on solving complex healthcare challenges across all ages, with particular expertise in pediatrics. Through early and sustained interventions in patient-centered information technology, CHIP has helped to redefine how health data is leveraged to empower patients and families and improve their care experiences.
CHIP has a longstanding focus on natural language processing and large language models , applying these technologies to extract meaningful insights from clinical text and improve healthcare delivery and public health. This work, along with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, supports clinical decision-making, predictive medicine, precision health, and population health management. CHIP develops technology for AI-driven solutions for point-of-care decision-making, integrating real-time data streams to enhance clinician workflows and provide actionable insights at the bedside, helping to bridge the gap between technology and its practical application to improve patient care, safety, and outcomes across diverse healthcare settings.
Our faculty and trainees are active at the border of informatics and regulatory science, particularly in the areas of electronic health records and postmarket surveillance.
We prepare the next generation of leaders in computational health and biomedical informatics through interdisciplinary education and mentorship at all levels, including masters, PhD (including the HMS Department of Biomedical Informatics AI in Medicine PhD Track), and postdoctoral education.
Committed to the principles of open science—embracing open source, open standards, and open specifications—CHIP ensures its innovations are widely adopted across healthcare and public health systems. Our research advances public health management, precision health, and predictive medicine by integrating real-world evidence, and building robust infrastructures for clinical decision-making and population health.
The Genomic Information Commons, a collaborative initiative founded by CHIP, brings together clinical, genomic, and phenotypic data from leading children’s hospitals. It supports large-scale genomic research, fosters gene discovery, and facilitates personalized treatments for rare and complex diseases. These extensive collaborations across pediatrics and other clinical specialties shape the future of healthcare.
Graduates of CHIP’s training programs hold leadership positions in academia and industry, both nationally and globally, reflecting CHIP’s broad influence in the field of biomedical informatics. As CHIP continues advancing AI and data science into real-world healthcare, the program remains focused on delivering innovations that improve patient care and health outcomes on a global scale.
