Tina Hernandez-Boussard

Professor of Medicine (Computational Medicine), of Biomedical Data Science, of Surgery and, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health

Bio

Dr. Hernandez-Boussard is an Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Biomedical Data Sciences, Surgery and Epidemiology & Population Health (by courtesy) at Stanford University. Her work is at the intersection of informatics and population health, promoting responsible AI across populations. She utilizes diverse, multimodal data to develop rigorous criteria and guidelines that steer the development of responsible AI, aiming to bridge gaps in health care and enhance patient outcomes. Dr. Hernandez-Boussard advocates for practices that ensure the benefits of digital technologies are realized across all segments of society

Academic Appointments

Professor, Computational Medicine
Professor, Department of Biomedical Data Science
Professor, Surgery
Professor (By courtesy), Epidemiology and Population Health
Member, Bio-X
Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Member, Stanford Cancer Institute
Member, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute

Administrative Appointments

Associate Dean of Research, Stanford School of Medicine (2022 - Present)
Division Representative, Team Science, Stanford University, Department of Medicine (2022 - Present)
Director, Faculty Development, Biomedical Informatics (2018 - 2022)
Director, Surgical Health Services Research Unit (2015 - 2017)
Co-Director, Surgical Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (2009 - 2015)

Honors & Awards

Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics (2020)
Innovation Award in Population Science, Stanford University (2012)
Innovation Award in Population Science, Stanford University (2011)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

Chairmen, National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the AHRQ (2020 - 2020)
Member, National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the AHRQ (2018 - 2019)
Member, Leading the Biomedical Revolution Workgroup (2016 - 2018)
Member, Health Services Research & Quality Review Section, AHRQ (2016 - 2018)
Member, VA BD-Step Executive Committee (2015 - 2018)
Member, Stanford Precision Health Committee (2015 - 2018)
Member, Stanford Surgical Council Committee (2015 - 2017)
Member, AHRQ Quality Indicators wrokgroup (2013 - 2015)
Member, AHRQ Quality Indicator™ ICD-10-CM/PCS Conversion Project (2012 - 2013)

Projects

Improving Quality of Postoperative Pain Care Through use of Electronic Health Records, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (September 1, 2015 - 6/30/2020)
Millions of Americans undergo surgery every year and postoperative pain is common and often poorly managed. Poorly managed postoperative pain may cause severe functional impairment, impaired care of the underlying diseases, transition to chronic pain, and decreased quality of life. Many controlled studies have demonstrated a variety of interventions that benefit postoperative pain, yet their application in a large and more diverse population is unknown and a nationally endorsed, concise quality process metric for postoperative pain management does not exist. One roadblock is that postoperative pain and its related outcomes are complex. The gathering of evidence from electronic health data, which draw from and inform real-world practice, could bypass this roadblock and inform decisions that lead to effective and efficient postoperative pain management. This project seeks to measure quality of care for postoperative pain, assess proposed evidence-based interventions from randomized controlled trails, lay the ground work for systematic pain-related research using EMRs, and produce population-based evidence for a nationally-endorsed postoperative pain management quality metric. To achieve these objectives, this project has three specific aims: (1) to develop standardized electronic definitions of pain-related care processes and outcomes (e.g. prolonged opioid use, readmission for pain, etc.); (2) to extract clinically meaningful data from both structured data and free text in electronic medical records (EMR) and examine the relationship between recommended care processes and outcomes for postoperative pain using EMRs; (3) to validate pain-related process-outcome relationships at a national level and to develop a National Quality Forum submission and evaluation form for a postoperative pain quality metric(s). This project will achieve these aims by developing data capture algorithms on Palo Alto Veterans Administration (VA) Healthcare data, refining algorithms at a tertiary academic hospital, and validating algorithms on the National VA healthcare system. Data will be identified and extracted from the EMR using an extended version of our validated data-mining workflow. Established experience with quality metric development and NQF endorsement will facilitate the dissemination of this work. These approaches are the basis of a learning healthcare system and the proposed research directly aligns with AHRQ’s mission and goals to improve healthcare quality through health information technology and data resources.

Location

Stanford University

Collaborators
- Catherine Curtin, Stanford University
- Steven Asch, Stanford University
- Ian Carroll, Stanford University
- Kathryn McDonald, School of Medicine
- Todd Wagner, Stanford University School of Medicine
- Nigam Shah, Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Computer Science, Stanford University
Utilizing Electronic Health Records to Measure and Improve Prostate Cancer Care, National Cancer Institute (NCI) (7/1/2015 - 6/30/2020)
Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in men. Newly diagnosed men face complex treatment choices, each with different risks of acquired morbidities, including patient-centered outcomes (PCOs). The widespread implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) provides opportunities to incorporate PCOs into healthcare quality metric evaluations. However, efforts to assess quality metrics in EHRs have been limited because most relevant data are not reliably captured in structured formats. Our proposal innovates in three ways. First, we will develop an EHR prostate cancer database that will allow for clinical care data to be analyzed alongside diagnostic details. Second, we will create novel ontological representations of quality metrics that will be public and reliably calculable across EHR-systems. Third, we will assemble a robust data-mining workflow that expands on existing quality assessment methods by focusing on ontology-based dictionaries to annotate free text. Combining this set of innovative components will uniquely allow us to use existing EHRs to efficiently study the association between treatment processes and outcomes. Our methods are applicable not only to prostate cancer, but any disease with associated quality metrics. Our primary hypothesis is important prostate cancer PCOs will differ significantly across treatments (i.e. robotic surgery, open prostatectomy, and radiation therapy). To gather data to test our hypothesis, we assemble a data-mining workflow to extract quality metrics from both structured and free-text components of EHRs. In Aim 1 we will create the building blocks needed to identify quality metric data in the EHR. We will develop an EHR-database, map quality metrics to medical vocabularies and ontologies, and create quality metric phenotypes. This will be the first endeavor to generate structured representations of quality metrics. In Aim 2 we will expand our workflow to gather data relevant to quality metrics from EHRs. This will allow us to identify and validate a comprehensive set of quality metrics from the EHR. We will validate our technologies in 3 different EHR systems to ensure transportability. In Aim 3 we will develop a web-based risk assessment tool to compare PCOs across prostate cancer treatments. Our proposal will be the largest assessment of patient-centered quality metrics. It will produce a validated list of structured quality metrics, data-mining workflow, clinician documentation feedback reports, and risk assessment tool. Given the current state of prostate cancer treatment and research, these results will significantly impact clinical care, providing clinicians and patients with evidence needed to balance the risks and benefits of different treatment options. Our work is consistent with our nation’s focus on EHR meaningful use and the comprehensive and systematic assessment of healthcare delivery, and with NCI’s focus on improving the quality of cancer care delivery.

Location

Stanford University

Collaborators
- James Brooks, Professor, Stanford University
- Douglas Blayney, Stanford University
- Kathryn McDonald, School of Medicine
- Nigam Shah, Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Computer Science, Stanford University
- Robert Tibshirani, Stanford University
Surgical Health Services Research, Stanford University
Location

Arastradero, Stanford University

Collaborators
- Mary Hawn, Professor, Stanford University
Developing individual predictive models for pain management and opioids, Stanford University

Location

Stanford University

Professional Education

M.S., Stanford University, Health Services Research (2013)
Ph.D., University Claude Bernard, Lyon 1, Computational Biology (1999)
M.P.H., Yale University, Epidemiology (1993)
B.A., University California, Irvine, Psychology (1991)
B.S., University of California, Irvine, Biology (1991)

Community and International Work

International Quality Improvement, Bologna, Italy

Topic

Quality Measurement

Partnering Organization(s)

Bologna University

Populations Served

Location

International

Ongoing Project

true

Opportunities for Student Involvement

true

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

My background and expertise is in the field of computational biology, with concentration in health services research. A key focus of my research is to apply novel methods and tools to large clinical datasets for hypothesis generation, comparative effectiveness research, and the evaluation of quality healthcare delivery. My research involves managing and manipulating big data, which range from administrative claims data to electronic health records, and applying novel biostatistical techniques to innovatively assess clinical and policy related research questions at the population level. This research enables us to create formal, statistically rigid, evaluations of healthcare data using unique combinations of large datasets.

2026-27 Courses

Deploying and Evaluating Fair AI in Healthcare
BMDS 223, CSRE 323, EPI 220 (Spr)
Using Real-World Data for Clinical and Population Health Research
BMDS 238, EPI 265, PSYC 265 (Spr)

Independent Studies
- Biomedical Data Science Teaching Methods
  BMDS 295 (Spr)
- Directed Reading
  BMDS 299 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Directed Reading in Surgery
  SURG 299 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Directed Study
  BIOE 391 (Aut, Win)
- Graduate Research
  EPI 399 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Graduate Research
  MED 399 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Graduate Research
  SURG 399 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Graduate Research on Biomedical Data Science
  BMDS 399 (Aut)
- Master's Research
  CME 291 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Medical Scholars Research
  NSUR 370 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Medical Scholars Research
  SURG 370 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Ph.D. Research Rotation
  CME 391 (Aut)
- Undergraduate Research
  EPI 199 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Undergraduate Research
  MED 199 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Undergraduate Research
  SURG 199 (Aut, Win, Spr)

Prior Year Courses

2025-26 Courses

Deploying and Evaluating Fair AI in Healthcare
BMDS 223, CSRE 323, EPI 220 (Spr)
Using Real-World Data for Clinical and Population Health Research
BMDS 238, EPI 265, PSYC 265 (Spr)

2024-25 Courses

Deploying and Evaluating Fair AI in Healthcare
BIOMEDIN 223, CSRE 323, EPI 220 (Spr)

2023-24 Courses

Deploying and Evaluating Fair AI in Healthcare
BIOMEDIN 223, EPI 220 (Spr)

Stanford Advisees

Med Scholar Project Advisor
Arman Koul
Postdoctoral Faculty Sponsor
Namu Park, Soumyadeep Roy
Master's Program Advisor
Sonia Narayanan, Kristine Ongaigui, Meg Quint
Doctoral (Program)
Alejandro Buendia, Maya Drusinsky, Joshua Lazaro, Keith Moore

Graduate and Fellowship Programs

Biomedical Data Science (PhD Program)
Biomedical Data Science (Masters Program)

All Publications

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Tina Hernandez-Boussard

Professor of Medicine (Computational Medicine), of Biomedical Data Science, of Surgery and, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health

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Partnering Organization(s)

Populations Served

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Opportunities for Student Involvement