Katherine Phoenix Liao, MD, MPH

Katherine Liao, MD, MPH

Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School (Secondary)

Brigham and Women's Hospital Rheumatology - PBB-B3 75 Francis St Boston, MA

Katherine Liao is a clinical investigator and practicing rheumatologist. The mission of her lab her lab is two-fold: (1) is to study rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and the clinical and genetic factors that lead to outcomes such as cardiovascular disease and severe joint damage, and (2) is to apply and develop bioinformatics methods to utilize big data for clinical and translational research studies. Liao’s research focuses on applying methods such as natural language processing to electronic medical record (EMR) data to perform clinical studies in RA and other conditions. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in patients with RA. This high risk has been attributed to inflammation, which is an important risk factor for heart disease in the general population. Determining these links can identify strategies to reduce CV risk in RA, as well as lead to potential targets of treatment in the general population. Liao is the PI of the R01 funded study, Lipids, Inflammation and CV risk in RA (LiiRA). The goal of LiiRA is to investigate how inflammation may modify important traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure, and the impact of these modifications on CV risk. She is also a co-investigator on an NIH U01 multi-center RCT, Treatment Against RA and Effect on FDG PET CT (TARGET). TARGET specifically tests the hypothesis that reducing inflammation, reduces vascular inflammation and CV risk in RA. In line with her research interests, Liao is co-Director of the Cardiovascular Rheumatology Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Through her work with the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) project, Liao led the team to develop an EMR research platform for RA studies. This platform integrated clinical and biomarker data (e.g. clinical EMR data, genetics, autoantibody data) allowing for both traditional genetic association studies as well as new approaches for data analyses such as the Phenome Wide Association Study (PheWAS). Using this platform, she collaborates closely with investigators from the fields of biostatistics and bioinformatics to apply novel methods to study focused clinical questions such as CVD in RA. Currently, she is leading a pilot project to port and further develop these methods at VA Boston Healthcare using nationwide VA data with a goal to establish an EMR research platform at the VA.

Coronary microvascular dysfunction in patients with psoriasis.
Authors: Weber B, Perez-Chada LM, Divakaran S, Brown JM, Taqueti V, Dorbala S, Blankstein R, Liao K, Merola JF, Di Carli M.
J Nucl Cardiol
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Patterns of Tumor Necrosis Factor Inhibitor (TNFi) Biosimilar Use Across United States Rheumatology Practices.
Authors: Bansback N, Curtis JR, Huang J, He Z, Evans M, Johansson T, Michaud K, Schmajuk G, Liao KP.
ACR Open Rheumatol
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Automated grouping of medical codes via multiview banded spectral clustering.
Authors: Zhang L, Zhang Y, Cai T, Ahuja Y, He Z, Ho YL, Beam A, Cho K, Carroll R, Denny J, Kohane I, Liao K, Cai T.
J Biomed Inform
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High-throughput phenotyping with electronic medical record data using a common semi-supervised approach (PheCAP).
Authors: Zhang Y, Cai T, Yu S, Cho K, Hong C, Sun J, Huang J, Ho YL, Ananthakrishnan AN, Xia Z, Shaw SY, Gainer V, Castro V, Link N, Honerlaw J, Huang S, Gagnon D, Karlson EW, Plenge RM, Szolovits P, Savova G, Churchill S, O'Donnell C, Murphy SN, Gaziano JM, Kohane I, Cai T, Liao KP.
Nat Protoc
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EXTraction of EMR numerical data: an efficient and generalizable tool to EXTEND clinical research.
Authors: Cai T, Zhang L, Yang N, Kumamaru KK, Rybicki FJ, Cai T, Liao KP.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak
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Coronary microvascular dysfunction in rheumatoid arthritis compared to diabetes mellitus and association with all-cause mortality.
Authors: Liao KP, Huang J, He Z, Cremone G, Lam E, Hainer JM, Morgan V, Bibbo C, Di Carli M.
Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken)
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Comparison of comorbidities and treatment between ankylosing spondylitis and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis in the United States.
Authors: Zhao SS, Ermann J, Xu C, Lyu H, Tedeschi SK, Liao KP, Yoshida K, Moots RJ, Goodson NJ, Solomon DH.
Rheumatology (Oxford)
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High-throughput multimodal automated phenotyping (MAP) with application to PheWAS.
Authors: Liao KP, Sun J, Cai TA, Link N, Hong C, Huang J, Huffman JE, Gronsbell J, Zhang Y, Ho YL, Castro V, Gainer V, Murphy SN, O'Donnell CJ, Gaziano JM, Cho K, Szolovits P, Kohane IS, Yu S, Cai T.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
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Disease Activity, Antineutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody Type, and Lipid Levels in Antineutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody-Associated Vasculitis.
Authors: Wallace ZS, Fu X, Liao K, Kallenberg CGM, Langford CA, Merkel PA, Monach P, Seo P, Specks U, Spiera R, St Clair EW, Zhang Y, Choi H, Stone JH.
Arthritis Rheumatol
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Incorporating natural language processing to improve classification of axial spondyloarthritis using electronic health records.
Authors: Zhao SS, Hong C, Cai T, Xu C, Huang J, Ermann J, Goodson NJ, Solomon DH, Cai T, Liao KP.
Rheumatology (Oxford)
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