Zak Kohane
Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD
Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Marion V. Nelson Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
10 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115

Over the last 30 years, the research agenda of Isaac Kohane  has been driven by the vision of what biomedical researchers could do to find new cures, provide new diagnoses and deliver the best care available if data could be converted more rapidly to knowledge and knowledge to practice. In so doing, Kohane has designed and led multiple internationally adopted efforts to “instrument” the healthcare enterprise for discovery and to enable innovative decision-making tools to be applied to the point of care. At the same time, the new insights afforded by ’omic-scale molecular analyses have inspired him and his collaborators to work on re-characterizing and reclassifying diseases such as autism, rheumatoid arthritis and cancers. In many of these studies, the developmental trajectories of thousands of genes have been a powerful tool in unraveling complex diseases. Kohane currently leads three NIH-funded projects that cut across the entire agenda:

  1. A Center for Excellence in Genomic Science to study neuropsychiatric disease at multiple levels (from molecular characterization of induced neurons obtained from fibroblasts of patients to automated classification of the textual component of their electronic medical record).
     
  2. The Coordinating Center for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. Where patients with rare and unknown diseases are provided with combined clinical and molecular diagnoses in a nationally-scaled infrastructure so that they can see the right expert with all their relevant data at hand.
     
  3. Center for Excellence in Big Data to Knowledge to both create a nationally scaleable research data-sharing infrastructure and demonstrate its use for neurodevelopmental diseases.
     

Kohane is always on the look out for like-minded “quants” who share the same goals to bring a better future for medicine and biomedical science to the present.


DBMI Research Areas
DBMI Courses
Current Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities
Healthcare spending and utilization for pediatric Irritable Bowel Syndrome in a commercially insured population.
Authors: Beinvogl B, Palmer N, Kohane I, Nurko S.
Neurogastroenterol Motil
View full abstract on Pubmed
Multinational characterization of neurological phenotypes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Authors: Le TT, Gutiérrez-Sacristán A, Son J, Hong C, South AM, Beaulieu-Jones BK, Loh NHW, Luo Y, Morris M, Ngiam KY, Patel LP, Samayamuthu MJ, Schriver E, Tan ALM, Moore J, Cai T, Omenn GS, Avillach P, Kohane IS, Visweswaran S, Mowery DL, Xia Z.
Sci Rep
View full abstract on Pubmed
International Changes in COVID-19 Clinical Trajectories Across 315 Hospitals and 6 Countries: Retrospective Cohort Study.
Authors: Weber GM, Zhang HG, L'Yi S, Bonzel CL, Hong C, Avillach P, Gutiérrez-Sacristán A, Palmer NP, Tan ALM, Wang X, Yuan W, Gehlenborg N, Alloni A, Amendola DF, Bellasi A, Bellazzi R, Beraghi M, Bucalo M, Chiovato L, Cho K, Dagliati A, Estiri H, Follett RW, García Barrio N, Hanauer DA, Henderson DW, Ho YL, Holmes JH, Hutch MR, Kavuluru R, Kirchoff K, Klann JG, Krishnamurthy AK, Le TT, Liu M, Loh NHW, Lozano-Zahonero S, Luo Y, Maidlow S, Makoudjou A, Malovini A, Martins MR, Moal B, Morris M, Mowery DL, Murphy SN, Neuraz A, Ngiam KY, Okoshi MP, Omenn GS, Patel LP, Pedrera Jiménez M, Prudente RA, Samayamuthu MJ, Sanz Vidorreta FJ, Schriver ER, Schubert P, Serrano Balazote P, Tan BW, Tanni SE, Tibollo V, Visweswaran S, Wagholikar KB, Xia Z, Zöller D, Kohane IS, Cai T, South AM, Brat GA.
J Med Internet Res
View full abstract on Pubmed
ATLAS: an automated association test using probabilistically linked health records with application to genetic studies.
Authors: Zhang HG, Hejblum BP, Weber GM, Palmer NP, Churchill SE, Szolovits P, Murphy SN, Liao KP, Kohane IS, Cai T.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
View full abstract on Pubmed
Effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in pregnancy.
Authors: Dagan N, Barda N, Biron-Shental T, Makov-Assif M, Key C, Kohane IS, Hernán MA, Lipsitch M, Hernandez-Diaz S, Reis BY, Balicer RD.
Nat Med
View full abstract on Pubmed
Patient-led data sharing for clinical bioinformatics research: USCDI and beyond.
Authors: Gordon WJ, Gottlieb D, Kreda D, Mandel JC, Mandl KD, Kohane IS.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
View full abstract on Pubmed
Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting.
Authors: Barda N, Dagan N, Ben-Shlomo Y, Kepten E, Waxman J, Ohana R, Hernán MA, Lipsitch M, Kohane I, Netzer D, Reis BY, Balicer RD.
N Engl J Med
View full abstract on Pubmed
Real-world data analyses unveiled the immune-related adverse effects of immune checkpoint inhibitors across cancer types.
Authors: Wang F, Yang S, Palmer N, Fox K, Kohane IS, Liao KP, Yu KH, Kou SC.
NPJ Precis Oncol
View full abstract on Pubmed
Fecal microbiota transplantation and Clostridioides difficile infection among privately insured patients in the United States.
Authors: El Halabi J, Palmer N, Fox K, Kohane I, Farhat MR.
J Gastroenterol
View full abstract on Pubmed
Medication Use in the Management of Comorbidities Among Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder From a Large Nationwide Insurance Database.
Authors: Feroe AG, Uppal N, Gutiérrez-Sacristán A, Mousavi S, Greenspun P, Surati R, Kohane IS, Avillach P.
JAMA Pediatr
View full abstract on Pubmed