Kevin B. Johnson, MD, MS was awarded the NIH Director's Pioneer Award under the "High-Risk, High-Reward Research" program funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund. Established in 2004, the NIH Director's Pioneer Award challenges investigators at all career levels to pursue new research directions and develop groundbreaking, high-impact approaches to a broad area of biomedical, behavioral, or social science.

Dr. Johnson is the David L. Cohen University Professor of Pediatrics and a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor who holds appointments in the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics in the Perelman School of Medicine. He is widely known for his work with e-prescribing and computer-based documentation and, more recently, work communicating science to lay audiences, which includes a documentary about health-information exchange. He has authored more than 200 publications and was elected to the American College of Medical Informatics, Academic Pediatric Society, National Academy of Medicine, International Association of Health Science Informatics, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Dr. Johnson will apply the NIH grant to a research project titled Helping Doctors Doctor: Using AI to Automate Documentation and "De-Autonomate" Health Care.

Learn more about this award and Dr. Johnson's work on Penn Today.