Yanshan Wang, PhD, FAMIA

Dr. Wang’s research lies at the intersection of biomedical informatics, clinical research informatics, and artificial intelligence. His research program develops and translates innovative generative AI (GenAI), large language model (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP) methods to transform complex electronic health record (EHR) data, particularly unstructured clinical text, into actionable information for patients, clinicians, and researchers. He has developed clinical NLP and AI methods for information extraction, computational phenotyping, real-world evidence generation, clinical decision support, and clinical and translational research across a broad range of disease areas.

A major focus of Dr. Wang’s work is building scalable AI and informatics infrastructure for multi-institutional clinical research. He serves as the NLP Lead for the NIH/NCATS-funded ENACT Network, where he leads efforts to develop and disseminate clinical NLP capabilities across a national research network encompassing 57 institutions and more than 142 million patient records. He also leads the Rehabilitation Datamart With Informatics Infrastructure for Research (ReDWINE), which transforms rehabilitation-related EHR data into the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model and develops advanced informatics tools to enable large-scale rehabilitation and real-world data research.
Dr. Wang has been a pioneer in applying GenAI and LLMs to clinical NLP, including the use of foundation models in zero-shot and few-shot settings for clinical applications. His recent research increasingly focuses on the rigorous evaluation, trustworthiness, safety, ethics, and implementation of GenAI in healthcare. He is the original developer of the GREAT PLEA ethical principles for GenAI in healthcare and has developed frameworks for systematically evaluating healthcare LLMs. His broader goal is to develop trustworthy, scalable, and generalizable AI technologies and accelerate their translation into clinical practice and biomedical research.

Dr. Wang leads a robust, externally funded research program with more than $10 million in active research funding from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He serves as PI or MPI on multiple NIH-funded projects addressing AI-enabled clinical research, precision rehabilitation, clinical decision support, and generative AI. His trainees have received national recognition, including AMIA best student paper awards and NIH-supported training awards. His research has been presented through invited and keynote talks, scientific panels, and national conferences and has received media coverage, including in Forbes.