THESIS DEFENSE: Machine Learning Approaches For Equitable Healthcare

Abstract: Advances in machine learning and the explosion of clinical data have demonstrated immense potential to fundamentally improve clinical care and deepen our understanding of human health. However, algorithms for medical interventions and scientific discovery in heterogeneous patient populations are particularly challenged by the complexities of healthcare data. Not only are clinical data noisy, missing, and irregularly sampled, but questions of equity and fairness also raise grave concerns and create additional computational challenges. In this thesis, I present novel approaches for leveraging machine learning towards equitable healthcare. The thesis concludes with a discussion about how to rethink the entire machine learning pipeline with an ethical lens to building algorithms that serve the entire patient population.

Thesis Committee: David Sontag (MIT), Peter Szolovits (MIT), Marzyeh Ghassemi (MIT)