Population evidence & health burden
Public data, access patterns, and disease-burden measures that help clarify where health systems and communities face avoidable friction.
- Open data
- Health equity
- Evidence synthesis
A research initiative of Northern Medical Center
Better health data research starts with better questions.
We connect clinical context, biostatistics, data science, and responsible AI to make complex health information more transparent—and more useful.
Part of Northern Medical Center, an organization working across clinical care, research, and whole-person health.
Clinical context · Quantitative methodsResearch areas
A connected view of health data.
Our work moves between population-level evidence and individual clinical context, with methods chosen for the question rather than the trend.
Medical imaging & clinical AI
Imaging-derived features and explainable models for neurological, oncological, and other clinically grounded research questions.
- Neuroimaging
- Radiomics
- Explainable AI
Biostatistics & multimodal data
Reproducible analysis across structured health data, images, and emerging molecular measurements, with uncertainty kept visible.
- Causal inference
- Machine learning
- Reproducibility
Whole-person & mental health
Mental health, brain health, prevention, and implementation questions studied with clinical context, measurable outcomes, and respect for the full person.
- Mental health
- Brain health
- Implementation
Programs & work
Applied work grounded in broader research programs.
Projects are documented as they develop within standing lines of inquiry, keeping work in progress distinct from capabilities and individual prior scholarship.
DOL / 001
Diagnostic Odyssey Ledger
Selected as a Phase 1 winner in the HHS TOPx Tech Sprint for AI and Invisible Illness , Diagnostic Odyssey Ledger is advancing through Phase 2 in the Cost of Illness challenge area. The evidence-linked prototype explores how fragmented public and health data can illuminate the time, cost, and access burdens associated with prolonged diagnostic journeys in invisible illness. View the TOPx sprint community page.
- U.S. public data
- Traceable evidence
- Uncertainty-aware estimates
- Human oversight
Program areas
Standing lines of inquiry that guide projects and collaborations as data, clinical needs, and partners align.
Mental and brain health measurement
Connecting clinical context, imaging, and meaningful outcome measures.
Imaging-informed risk research
Comparing predictive performance with explanations people can inspect.
Public data for local decisions
Turning dispersed evidence into traceable, uncertainty-aware views.
Research outputs
Contributor publications and prior scholarship.
Research outputs are labeled by provenance so that contributor scholarship is not mistaken for work produced by the Data Center.
Publication by a Data Center contributor
SPIE Medical Imaging · Computer-Aided Diagnosis
Explainable harmonized cortical graph neural networks for risk prediction of Alzheimer’s disease
DOI 10.1117/12.3087886Peer-reviewed prior work
Selected research from outside the Data Center
These peer-reviewed articles reflect contributors’ independent work and prior affiliations. They were not produced by Data Center, Northern Medical Center.
Shawn Wu
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in hepatic encephalopathy: current status and perspectives
Metabolic Brain Disease · 2014 · DOI 10.1007/s11011-014-9504-9
Shawn Wu
Dual-energy CT imaging of thoracic malignancies
Cancer Imaging · 2013 · DOI 10.1102/1470-7330.2013.0009
People
Clinical perspective meets quantitative craft.
A small, interdisciplinary group with experience extending beyond any one project.
Lead contributor
Biostatistics · Applied AI
Ian Liu
A biomedical data science researcher working across biostatistics, medical imaging, explainable AI, spatial data, and reproducible research.
Clinical mentor
Psychiatry · Whole-person health
Jingduan Yang, MD
A psychiatrist and integrative medicine physician whose work connects mental health, conventional care, Chinese medicine, and whole-person approaches.
His books include Clinical Acupuncture and Ancient Chinese Medicine and Facing East.
Research mentor
Medical imaging · Neuroimaging
Shawn Wu, MBBS, PhD
A medical imaging researcher with prior work spanning CT, PET, MRI, oncology, brain connectivity, and neuroinflammation.
About the Data Center
Institutional roots. An experimental research mindset.
Data Center, Northern Medical Center is an interdisciplinary research initiative. We explore focused questions where clinical experience, public evidence, and quantitative methods can produce something more useful together than apart.
Start with the decision
Define who needs the evidence, what it can support, and what it cannot.
Keep the chain of evidence visible
Document sources, assumptions, uncertainty, and material limitations.
Use technology with restraint
Apply AI where it adds value, with human review and an appropriate use case.
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