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.

Use of Narrative Concepts in Electronic Health Records to Validate Associations Between Genetic Factors and Response to Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
Authors: Ananthakrishnan AN, Cagan A, Cai T, Gainer VS, Savova G, Shaw SY, Churchill S, Burke KE, Karlson EW, Murphy SN, Kohane I, Liao KP, Xavier RJ.
Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol
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Interference of tumor necrosis factor inhibitor treatments on soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 levels in rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Yang N, Huang J, Frits M, Iannaccone C, Weinblatt ME, Rifai N, Shadick N, Bradwin G, Liao KP.
Pract Lab Med
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Correction to: Association between inflammation and systolic blood pressure in RA compared to patients without RA.
Authors: Yu Z, Kim SC, Vanni K, Huang J, Desai R, Murphy SN, Solomon DH, Liao KP.
Arthritis Res Ther
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Lipids and cardiovascular risk through the lens of rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Liao KP, Solomon DH.
Arthritis Rheumatol
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Large-Scale Simultaneous Testing of Cross-Covariance Matrices with Applications to PheWAS.
Authors: Cai T, Cai TT, Liao K, Liu W.
Stat Sin
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f(1Feature Extraction for Phenotyping from Semantic and Knowledge Resources.
Authors: Ning W, Chan S, Beam A, Yu M, Geva A, Liao K, Mullen M, Mandl KD, Kohane I, Cai T, Yu S.
J Biomed Inform
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Probabilistic record linkage of de-identified research datasets with discrepancies using diagnosis codes.
Authors: Hejblum BP, Weber GM, Liao KP, Palmer NP, Churchill S, Shadick NA, Szolovits P, Murphy SN, Kohane IS, Cai T.
Sci Data
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Identifying lupus patients in electronic health records: Development and validation of machine learning algorithms and application of rule-based algorithms.
Authors: Jorge A, Castro VM, Barnado A, Gainer V, Hong C, Cai T, Cai T, Carroll R, Denny JC, Crofford L, Costenbader KH, Liao KP, Karlson EW, Feldman CH.
Semin Arthritis Rheum
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Risk of Hospitalized Infection and Initiation of Abatacept versus TNF Inhibitors among Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: a Propensity Score-Matched Cohort Study.
Authors: Chen SK, Liao KP, Liu J, Kim SC.
Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken)
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Automated Feature Selection of Predictors in Electronic Medical Records Data.
Authors: Gronsbell J, Minnier J, Yu S, Liao K, Cai T.
Biometrics
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