Alexa McCray

Alexa McCray, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Co-Founder, DBMI

Alexa T. McCray is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She conducts research on knowledge representation and discovery, with a special focus on the significant problems that persist in the curation, dissemination, and exchange of scientific and clinical information in biomedicine and health. Dr. McCray joined Harvard Medical School in 2005, where she co-founded the Center for Biomedical Informatics, now the Department of Biomedical Informatics. She served as a Principal Investigator of the US-wide Undiagnosed Diseases Network, an NIH research study that seeks to provide answers for patients and families affected by undiagnosed conditions.

Dr. McCray is the former director of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, an intramural research division of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. While at the NIH, she directed the design and development of a number of national information resources, including ClinicalTrials.gov, Genetics Home Reference, and Profiles in Science, and she played a key role in the UMLS project, a large-scale effort that integrates health and biomedical terminologies to enable interoperability among computer systems. Before joining the NIH, she was on the research staff of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. She received the PhD from Georgetown University, and for three years was on the faculty there. She conducted pre-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. McCray was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. She is the immediate past chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Board on Research Data and Information, and she chaired a 2018 NASEM consensus study entitled Open Science by Design: Realizing a Vision for 21st Century Research.

Participation in a national diagnostic research study: assessing the patient experience.
Authors: Rosenfeld LE, LeBlanc K, Nagy A, Ego BK, McCray AT.
Orphanet J Rare Dis
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Patients as Partners in Rare Disease Diagnosis and Research.
Authors: McCray AT, LeBlanc K.
Yale J Biol Med
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R|S Atlas: Identifying existing cohort study data resources to accelerate epidemiological research on the influence of religion and spirituality on human health.
Authors: Schachter AB, Argentieri MA, Seddighzadeh B, Isehunwa OO, Kent BV, Trevvett P, McDuffie M, Mandel L, Pargament KI, Underwood LG, McCray AT, Shields AE.
BMJ Open
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Clinical sites of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network: unique contributions to genomic medicine and science.
Authors: Schoch K, Esteves C, Bican A, Spillmann R, Cope H, McConkie-Rosell A, Walley N, Fernandez L, Kohler JN, Bonner D, Reuter C, Stong N, Mulvihill JJ, Novacic D, Wolfe L, Abdelbaki A, Toro C, Tifft C, Malicdan M, Gahl W, Liu P, Newman J, Goldstein DB, Hom J, Sampson J, Wheeler MT, Cogan J, Bernstein JA, Adams DR, McCray AT, Shashi V.
Genet Med
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The American Heart Association 2030 Impact Goal: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association.
Authors: Angell SY, McConnell MV, Anderson CAM, Bibbins-Domingo K, Boyle DS, Capewell S, Ezzati M, de Ferranti S, Gaskin DJ, Goetzel RZ, Huffman MD, Jones M, Khan YM, Kim S, Kumanyika SK, McCray AT, Merritt RK, Milstein B, Mozaffarian D, Norris T, Roth GA, Sacco RL, Saucedo JF, Shay CM, Siedzik D, Saha S, Warner JJ.
Circulation
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Donald A. B. Lindberg (1933-2019).
Authors: McCray AT, Haux R, van Bemmel JH.
Methods Inf Med
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On the 80th Birthday of Jan van Bemmel.
Authors: Ball MJ, Bergemann D, Hasman A, Haux R, McCray AT, van der Lei J.
Yearb Med Inform
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Effect of Genetic Diagnosis on Patients with Previously Undiagnosed Disease.
Authors: Splinter K, Adams DR, Bacino CA, Bellen HJ, Bernstein JA, Cheatle-Jarvela AM, Eng CM, Esteves C, Gahl WA, Hamid R, Jacob HJ, Kikani B, Koeller DM, Kohane IS, Lee BH, Loscalzo J, Luo X, McCray AT, Metz TO, Mulvihill JJ, Nelson SF, Palmer CGS, Phillips JA, Pick L, Postlethwait JH, Reuter C, Shashi V, Sweetser DA, Tifft CJ, Walley NM, Wangler MF, Westerfield M, Wheeler MT, Wise AL, Worthey EA, Yamamoto S, Ashley EA.
N Engl J Med
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Characteristics of undiagnosed diseases network applicants: implications for referring providers.
Authors: Walley NM, Pena LDM, Hooper SR, Cope H, Jiang YH, McConkie-Rosell A, Sanders C, Schoch K, Spillmann RC, Strong K, McCray AT, Mazur P, Esteves C, LeBlanc K, Wise AL, Shashi V.
BMC Health Serv Res
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Medical subdomain classification of clinical notes using a machine learning-based natural language processing approach.
Authors: Weng WH, Wagholikar KB, McCray AT, Szolovits P, Chueh HC.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak
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