Weber Lab

Introduction

Griffin Weber, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Interdisciplinary Medicine and Biotechnology, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS); the Director of the Biomedical Research Informatics Core (BRIC) at BIDMC; and a Research Associate in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at HMS.

One of Dr. Weber's research areas is in expertise mining and social network analysis. He invented an open source social networking website for scientists called Profiles RNS (https://profiles.catalyst.harvard.edu). It automatically mines large datasets such as PubMed, NIH ExPORTER, and the U.S. patent database to discover investigators' research areas and scientific networks. It presents these connections using temporal, geospatial, and network visualizations. The software has numerous applications, ranging from finding individual collaborators and mentors to understanding the dynamics of an entire research community. Profiles RNS is now used at dozens of universities across the country.

Dr. Weber is also an investigator on Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2), an NIH National Center for Biomedical Computing, for which he helped developed a web-based open source platform that enables a variety of functions including queries of large clinical repositories for hypothesis testing and identification of patients for clinical trials (https://www.i2b2.org). He also created the original prototype software for the Shared Health Research Information Network (SHRINE), which is a federated query tool that connects i2b2 databases across multiple institutions. More than 100 institutions worldwide use i2b2 and SHRINE to support clinical research.

Dr. Weber received his M.D. and Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University in 2007. While still a student, he became the first Chief Technology Officer of Harvard Medical School and built an educational web portal that provides interactive online content to over 500 courses. His past research projects also include analyzing DNA microarrays, modeling the growth of breast cancer tumors, and creating algorithms for predicting life expectancy.

Contact Information

Email: weber@hms.harvard.edu

Phone: 617-432-6134

Address: 10 Shattuck St, Room 306, Boston, MA 02115

Research Projects

Biases introduced by filtering EHRs for patients with "complete data"

Nationwide adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) has led to the increasing availability of large clinical datasets. However, because the same patient could be treated at multiple health care institutions, data from only a single EHR might not contain the complete medical history for that patient, with critical events potentially missing. This study identifies biases that are introduced by selecting patients with fewer gaps in their record.

Visualizing healthcare system dynamics in biomedical Big Data

Biomedical Big Data, such as electronic health records (EHR) and administrative claims, are records of patients' interactions with the healthcare system; for example, the date of a diagnosis is when a physician entered the code into the EHR, not when the patient developed the disease. Most researchers are either unaware of the distinction or naively treat it as noise. However, the proposed research will show, using a novel Data Visualization, that these subtle effects of the healthcare system on observational clinical data actually contain valuable information that could benefit biomedical research, clinical care, and health care policy.

Modeling scientific workforce dynamics using social network analysis

The scientific workforce is increasingly relying on teams to solve the most critical intellectual and social problems that confront us today. Team collaborations, a growing trend across all disciplines, yield publications with higher intellectual impact than single researchers; and, the careers of young scientists are influenced by relationships with others in the community. The project is developing a systems-based approach to studying scientific workforce dynamics that models the mechanisms of how new collaborations form and how these influence both the effectiveness of teams and the career trajectories of individual scientists.

Publications

  1. Bourgeois FT, Gutierrez-Sacristan A, Keller MS, Liu M, Hong C, Bonzel CL, Tan ALM, Aronow BJ, Boeker M, Booth J, Cruz Rojo J, Devkota B, Garcia Barrio N, Gehlenborg N, Geva A, Hanauer DA, Hutch MR, Issitt RW, Klann JG, Luo Y, Mandl KD, Mao C, Moal B, Moshal KL, Murphy SN, Neuraz A, Ngiam KY, Omenn GS, Patel LP, Jimenez MP, Sebire NJ, Balazote PS, Serret-Larmande A, South AM, Spiridou A, Taylor DM, Tippmann P, Visweswaran S, Weber GM, Kohane IS, Cai T, Avillach P. International Analysis of Electronic Health Records of Children and Youth Hospitalized With COVID-19 Infection in 6 Countries. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 06 01; 4(6):e2112596. PMC8196345
  2. Visweswaran S, Samayamuthu MJ, Morris M, Weber GM, MacFadden D, Trevvett P, Klann JG, Gainer VS, Benoit B, Murphy SN, Patel L, Mirkovic N, Borovskiy Y, Johnson RD, Wyatt MC, Wang AY, Follett RW, Chau N, Zhu W, Abajian M, Chuang A, Bahroos N, Reeder P, Xie D, Cai J, Sendro ER, Toto RD, Firestein GS, Nadler LM, Reis SE. Development of a Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Application Ontology for the Accrual to Clinical Trials (ACT) network. JAMIA Open. 2021 Apr; 4(2):ooab036. PMC8083220
  3. Beaulieu-Jones BK, Yuan W, Brat GA, Beam AL, Weber G, Ruffin M, Kohane IS. Machine learning for patient risk stratification: standing on, or looking over, the shoulders of clinicians? NPJ Digit Med. 2021 Mar 30; 4(1):62. PMC8010071
  4. Visweswaran S, Samayamuthu MJ, Morris M, Weber GM, MacFadden D, Trevvett P, Klann JG, Gainer V, Benoit B, Murphy SN, Patel L, Mirkovic N, Borovskiy Y, Johnson RD, Wyatt MC, Wang AY, Follett RW, Chau N, Zhu W, Abajian M, Chuang A, Bahroos N, Reeder P, Xie D, Cai J, Sendro ER, Toto RD, Firestein GS, Nadler LM, Reis SE. Development of a COVID-19 Application Ontology for the ACT Network. medRxiv. 2021 Mar 24. PMC8010766
  5. Kohane IS, Aronow BJ, Avillach P, Beaulieu-Jones BK, Bellazzi R, Bradford RL, Brat GA, Cannataro M, Cimino JJ, Garcia-Barrio N, Gehlenborg N, Ghassemi M, Gutierrez-Sacristan A, Hanauer DA, Holmes JH, Hong C, Klann JG, Loh NHW, Luo Y, Mandl KD, Daniar M, Moore JH, Murphy SN, Neuraz A, Ngiam KY, Omenn GS, Palmer N, Patel LP, Pedrera-Jimenez M, Sliz P, South AM, Tan ALM, Taylor DM, Taylor BW, Torti C, Vallejos AK, Wagholikar KB, Weber GM, Cai T. What Every Reader Should Know About Studies Using Electronic Health Record Data but May Be Afraid to Ask. J Med Internet Res. 2021 03 02; 23(3):e22219. PMC7927948
  6. Haendel MA, Chute CG, Bennett TD, Eichmann DA, Guinney J, Kibbe WA, Payne PRO, Pfaff ER, Robinson PN, Saltz JH, Spratt H, Suver C, Wilbanks J, Wilcox AB, Williams AE, Wu C, Blacketer C, Bradford RL, Cimino JJ, Clark M, Colmenares EW, Francis PA, Gabriel D, Graves A, Hemadri R, Hong SS, Hripscak G, Jiao D, Klann JG, Kostka K, Lee AM, Lehmann HP, Lingrey L, Miller RT, Morris M, Murphy SN, Natarajan K, Palchuk MB, Sheikh U, Solbrig H, Visweswaran S, Walden A, Walters KM, Weber GM, Zhang XT, Zhu RL, Amor B, Girvin AT, Manna A, Qureshi N, Kurilla MG, Michael SG, Portilla LM, Rutter JL, Austin CP, Gersing KR. The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): Rationale, design, infrastructure, and deployment. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021 03 01; 28(3):427-443. PMC7454687
  7. Klann JG, Weber GM, Estiri H, Moal B, Avillach P, Hong C, Castro V, Maulhardt T, Tan ALM, Geva A, Beaulieu-Jones BK, Malovini A, South AM, Visweswaran S, Omenn GS, Ngiam KY, Mandl KD, Boeker M, Olson KL, Mowery DL, Morris M, Follett RW, Hanauer DA, Bellazzi R, Moore JH, Loh NW, Bell DS, Wagholikar KB, Chiovato L, Tibollo V, Rieg S, Li ALLJ, Jouhet V, Schriver E, Samayamuthu MJ, Xia Z, Hutch M, Luo Y, Kohane IS, Brat GA, Murphy SN. Validation of an Internationally Derived Patient Severity Phenotype to Support COVID-19 Analytics from Electronic Health Record Data. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021 Feb 10. PMC7928835
  8. Weber GM, Hong C, Palmer NP, Avillach P, Murphy SN, Gutierrez-Sacristan A, Xia Z, Serret-Larmande A, Neuraz A, Omenn GS, Visweswaran S, Klann JG, South AM, Loh NHW, Cannataro M, Beaulieu-Jones BK, Bellazzi R, Agapito G, Alessiani M, Aronow BJ, Bell DS, Bellasi A, Benoit V, Beraghi M, Boeker M, Booth J, Bosari S, Bourgeois FT, Brown NW, Bucalo M, Chiovato L, Chiudinelli L, Dagliati A, Devkota B, DuVall SL, Follett RW, Ganslandt T, Garcia Barrio N, Gradinger T, Griffier R, Hanauer DA, Holmes JH, Horki P, Huling KM, Issitt RW, Jouhet V, Keller MS, Kraska D, Liu M, Luo Y, Lynch KE, Malovini A, Mandl KD, Mao C, Maram A, Matheny ME, Maulhardt T, Mazzitelli M, Milano M, Moore JH, Morris JS, Morris M, Mowery DL, Naughton TP, Ngiam KY, Norman JB, Patel LP, Pedrera Jimenez M, Ramoni RB, Schriver ER, Scudeller L, Sebire NJ, Serrano Balazote P, Spiridou A, Tan AL, Tan BW, Tibollo V, Torti C, Trecarichi EM, Vitacca M, Zambelli A, Zucco C, Kohane IS, Cai T, Brat GA. International Comparisons of Harmonized Laboratory Value Trajectories to Predict Severe COVID-19: Leveraging the 4CE Collaborative Across 342 Hospitals and 6 Countries: A Retrospective Cohort Study. medRxiv. 2021 Feb 05. PMC7872369
  9. Yu YW, Weber GM. Balancing Accuracy and Privacy in Federated Queries of Clinical Data Repositories: Algorithm Development and Validation. J Med Internet Res. 2020 11 03; 22(11):e18735. PMC7671849
  10. Carney BJ, Uhlmann EJ, Puligandla M, Mantia C, Weber GM, Neuberg DS, Zwicker JI. Anticoagulation after intracranial hemorrhage in brain tumors: Risk of recurrent hemorrhage and venous thromboembolism. Res Pract Thromb Haemost. 2020 Jul; 4(5):860-865. PMC7354400
  11. Carney BJ, Uhlmann EJ, Puligandla M, Mantia C, Weber GM, Neuberg DS, Zwicker JI. Intracranial hemorrhage with direct oral anticoagulants in patients with brain tumors. J Thromb Haemost. 2018 Nov 19. doi: 10.1111/jth.14336. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30450803.
  12. Agniel D, Kohane IS, Weber GM. Biases in electronic health record data due to processes within the healthcare system: retrospective observational study. BMJ. 2018 Apr 30;361:k1479. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k1479. Erratum in: BMJ. 2018 Oct 18;363:k4416. PubMed PMID: 29712648; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5925441.
  13. Weber GM. Using Artificial Intelligence in an Intelligent Way to Improve Efficiency of a Heart Failure Care Team. J Card Fail. 2018 Jun;24(6):363-364. doi: 10.1016/j.cardfail.2018.04.003. Epub 2018 Apr 18. PubMed PMID: 29679716.
  14. Weber GM, Adams WG, Bernstam EV, Bickel JP, Fox KP, Marsolo K, Raghavan VA, Turchin A, Zhou X, Murphy SN, Mandl KD. Biases introduced by filtering electronic health records for patients with "complete data". J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2017 Nov 1;24(6):1134-1141. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocx071. PubMed PMID: 29016972; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6080680.
  15. Warner ET, Carapinha R, Weber GM, Hill EV, Reede JY. Gender Differences in Receipt of National Institutes of Health R01 Grants Among Junior Faculty at an Academic Medical Center: The Role of Connectivity, Rank, and Research Productivity. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2017 Oct;26(10):1086-1093. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2016.6102. Epub 2017 Aug 3. PubMed PMID: 28771391; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5651959.
  16. Mantia C, Uhlmann EJ, Puligandla M, Weber GM, Neuberg D, Zwicker JI. Predicting the higher rate of intracranial hemorrhage in glioma patients receiving therapeutic enoxaparin. Blood. 2017 Jun 22;129(25):3379-3385. doi: 10.1182/blood-2017-02-767285. Epub 2017 May 3. PubMed PMID: 28468796.
  17. Hauser TH, Salastekar N, Schaefer EJ, Desai T, Goldfine HL, Fowler KM, Weber GM, Welty F, Clouse M, Shoelson SE, Goldfine AB. Effect of Targeting Inflammation With Salsalate: The TINSAL-CVD Randomized Clinical Trial on Progression of Coronary Plaque in Overweight and Obese Patients Using Statins. JAMA Cardiol. 2016 Jul 1; 1(4):413-23.
  18. Warner ET, Carapinha R, Weber GM, Hill EV, Reede JY. Faculty Promotion and Attrition: The Importance of Coauthor Network Reach at an Academic Medical Center. J Gen Intern Med. 2016 Jan; 31(1):60-7.
  19. Warner ET, Carapinha R, Weber GM, Hill EV, Reede JY. Considering Context in Academic Medicine: Differences in Demographic and Professional Characteristics and in Research Productivity and Advancement Metrics Across Seven Clinical Departments. Acad Med. 2015 Aug; 90(8):1077-83.
  20. Donato J, Campigotto F, Uhlmann EJ, Coletti E, Neuberg D, Weber GM, Zwicker JI. Intracranial hemorrhage in patients with brain metastases treated with therapeutic enoxaparin: a matched cohort study. Blood. 2015 Jul 23; 126(4):494-9.
  21. Weber GM. Federated queries of clinical data repositories: Scaling to a national network. J Biomed Inform. 2015 Jun; 55:231-6.
  22. Weber GM, Mandl KD, Kohane IS. Finding the missing link for big biomedical data. JAMA. 2014 Jun 25; 311(24):2479-80.
  23. Mandl KD, Kohane IS, McFadden D, Weber GM, Natter M, Mandel J, Schneeweiss S, Weiler S, Klann JG, Bickel J, Adams WG, Ge Y, Zhou X, Perkins J, Marsolo K, Bernstam E, Showalter J, Quarshie A, Ofili E, Hripcsak G, Murphy SN. Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS): architecture. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014 Jul-Aug; 21(4):615-20.
  24. Klann JG, Buck MD, Brown J, Hadley M, Elmore R, Weber GM, Murphy SN. Query Health: standards-based, cross-platform population health surveillance. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014 Jul-Aug; 21(4):650-6.
  25. Kahlon M, Yuan L, Daigre J, Meeks E, Nelson K, Piontkowski C, Reuter K, Sak R, Turner B, Weber GM, Chatterjee A. The use and significance of a research networking system. J Med Internet Res. 2014; 16(2):e46.
  26. Weber GM, Kohane IS. Extracting physician group intelligence from electronic health records to support evidence based medicine. PLoS One. 2013; 8(5):e64933.
  27. Weber GM. Identifying translational science within the triangle of biomedicine. J Transl Med. 2013; 11:126.
  28. Weber GM. How many patients are "normal"? Only 1.55%. AMIA Jt Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2013; 2013:79.
  29. McMurry AJ, Murphy SN, MacFadden D, Weber G, Simons WW, Orechia J, Bickel J, Wattanasin N, Gilbert C, Trevvett P, Churchill S, Kohane IS. SHRINE: enabling nationally scalable multi-site disease studies. PLoS One. 2013; 8(3):e55811.
  30. Weber GM. Federated queries of clinical data repositories: the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jun; 20(e1):e155-61.
  31. Natter MD, Quan J, Ortiz DM, Bousvaros A, Ilowite NT, Inman CJ, Marsolo K, McMurry AJ, Sandborg CI, Schanberg LE, Wallace CA, Warren RW, Weber GM, Mandl KD. An i2b2-based, generalizable, open source, self-scaling chronic disease registry. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jan 1; 20(1):172-9.
  32. Kohane IS, McMurry A, Weber G, MacFadden D, Rappaport L, Kunkel L, Bickel J, Wattanasin N, Spence S, Murphy S, Churchill S. The co-morbidity burden of children and young adults with autism spectrum disorders. PLoS One. 2012; 7(4):e33224.
  33. Murphy SN, Dubey A, Embi PJ, Harris PA, Richter BG, Turisco F, Weber GM, Tcheng JE, Keogh D. Current state of information technologies for the clinical research enterprise across academic medical centers. Clin Transl Sci. 2012 Jun; 5(3):281-4.
  34. Weber GM, Barnett W, Conlon M, Eichmann D, Kibbe W, Falk-Krzesinski H, Halaas M, Johnson L, Meeks E, Mitchell D, Schleyer T, Stallings S, Warden M, Kahlon M. Direct2Experts: a pilot national network to demonstrate interoperability among research-networking platforms. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011 Dec; 18 Suppl 1:i157-60.
  35. Wang KC, Jeanmenne A, Weber GM, Thawait SK, Thawait S, Carrino JA. An online evidence-based decision support system for distinguishing benign from malignant vertebral compression fractures by magnetic resonance imaging feature analysis. J Digit Imaging. 2011 Jun; 24(3):507-15.
  36. Murphy SN, Weber G, Mendis M, Gainer V, Chueh HC, Churchill S, Kohane I. Serving the enterprise and beyond with informatics for integrating biology and the bedside (i2b2). J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2010 Mar-Apr; 17(2):124-30.
  37. Milo R, Jorgensen P, Moran U, Weber G, Springer M. BioNumbers--the database of key numbers in molecular and cell biology. Nucleic Acids Res. 2010 Jan; 38(Database issue):D750-3.
  38. Weber GM, Murphy SN, McMurry AJ, Macfadden D, Nigrin DJ, Churchill S, Kohane IS. The Shared Health Research Information Network (SHRINE): a prototype federated query tool for clinical data repositories. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009 Sep-Oct; 16(5):624-30.
  39. Shen LQ, Child A, Weber GM, Folkman J, Aiello LP. Rosiglitazone and delayed onset of proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Arch Ophthalmol. 2008 Jun; 126(6):793-9.
  40. Weber G, Weber G. Pizza Combinatorics Revisited. The College Mathematics Journal. 2006; 37(1):43-4.
  41. Weber G, Ohno-Machado L, Shieber S. Representation in stochastic search for phylogenetic tree reconstruction. J Biomed Inform. 2006 Feb; 39(1):43-50.
  42. Col NF, Weber G, Stiggelbout A, Chuo J, D'Agostino R, Corso P. Short-term menopausal hormone therapy for symptom relief: an updated decision model. Arch Intern Med. 2004 Aug 9-23; 164(15):1634-40.
  43. Blackshaw S, Harpavat S, Trimarchi J, Cai L, Huang H, Kuo WP, Weber G, Lee K, Fraioli RE, Cho SH, Yung R, Asch E, Ohno-Machado L, Wong WH, Cepko CL. Genomic analysis of mouse retinal development. PLoS Biol. 2004 Sep; 2(9):E247.
  44. Weber G, Vinterbo S, Ohno-Machado L. Multivariate selection of genetic markers in diagnostic classification. Artif Intell Med. 2004 Jun; 31(2):155-67.
  45. Xu Y, Stange-Thomann N, Weber G, Bo R, Dodge S, David RG, Foley K, Beheshti J, Harris NL, Birren B, Lander ES, Meyerson M. Pathogen discovery from human tissue by sequence-based computational subtraction. Genomics. 2003 Mar; 81(3):329-35.
  46. Michaelson JS, Satija S, Moore R, Weber G, Halpern E, Garland A, Kopans DB. Journal of Women's Imaging. Estimates of Breast Cancer Growth Rate and Sojourn Time from Screening Database Information. 2003; (1):11-19.
  47. Michaelson JS, Satija S, Moore R, Weber G, Halpern E, Garland A, Kopans DB. Journal of Women's Imaging. Estimates of the Sizes at Which Breast Cancers Become Detectable on Mammographic and Clinical Grounds. 2003; (1):3-10.
  48. Michaelson JS, Silverstein M, Wyatt J, Weber G, Moore R, Halpern E, Kopans DB, Hughes K. Predicting the survival of patients with breast carcinoma using tumor size. Cancer. 2002 Aug 15; 95(4):713-23.
  49. Weber G, Shendure J, Tanenbaum DM, Church GM, Meyerson M. Identification of foreign gene sequences by transcript filtering against the human genome. Nat Genet. 2002 Feb; 30(2):141-2.
  50. Col NF, Fortin JM, Weber G. Clearinghouse Number JC020766. Using the Web to Promote Smoking Cessation and Health for College-Aged Women. Educational Resources Information Center. 2002.
  51. Weber G, Vinterbo S, Ohno-Machado L. Building an asynchronous web-based tool for machine learning classification. Proc AMIA Symp. 2002; 869-73.
  52. Ohno-Machado L, Vinterbo S, Weber G. Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems. Classification of Gene Expression Data Using Fuzzy Logic. 2002; 12(1):19-24.
  53. Michaelson J, Satija S, Moore R, Weber G, Halpern E, Garland A, Puri D, Kopans DB. The pattern of breast cancer screening utilization and its consequences. Cancer. 2002 Jan 1; 94(1):37-43.
  54. Bhattacharjee A, Richards WG, Staunton J, Li C, Monti S, Vasa P, Ladd C, Beheshti J, Bueno R, Gillette M, Loda M, Weber G, Mark EJ, Lander ES, Wong W, Johnson BE, Golub TR, Sugarbaker DJ, Meyerson M. Classification of human lung carcinomas by mRNA expression profiling reveals distinct adenocarcinoma subclasses. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Nov 20; 98(24):13790-5.
  55. Comander J, Weber GM, Gimbrone MA, Garcia-Cardena G. Argus--a new database system for Web-based analysis of multiple microarray data sets. Genome Res. 2001 Sep; 11(9):1603-10.
  56. Michaelson JS, Satija S, Moore R, Weber G, Halpern E, Garland A, Kopans DB. Journal of Women's Imaging. Observations on Invasive Breast Cancer Diagnosed in a Service Screening and Diagnostic Breast Imaging Program. 2001; 3:99-104.
  57. Weber G, Weber G. Pizza Combinatorics. The College Mathematics Journal. 1995; 26(2):141-3.