Clark Freifeld is a lecturer in the Khoury College of Computer Science at Northeastern University. His research focuses on applications of computing technology and artificial intelligence to the improvement of population health. He also serves as an affiliate faculty member at the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children’s Hospital. Freifeld has co-authored over twenty journal articles and co-founded and overseen a range of health informatics projects. His projects include: HealthMap, a global disease surveillance platform; MedWatcher, a medical product safety monitoring system; and StreetRx, a crowdsourcing tool for understanding black market pharmaceutical transactions.
Freifeld’s work has been used by millions of people and supported by public health agencies including CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and FDA, as well as being recognized by the Smithsonian and Library of Congress. Before joining the faculty at Northeastern, Freifeld was co-founder and chief technology officer of Epidemico, a health informatics spinout from Boston Children’s and MIT, now a division of Booz Allen Hamilton.
Boston, MA.
My educational background has been interdisciplinary throughout my career: my undergraduate major was in computer science and mathematics combined; I earned my master’s at the MIT Media Lab in a group focused on applications of technology for health and wellness; and my PhD in biomedical engineering synthesized elements of computer science and epidemiology.
My research applies information technology and computer science techniques to problems in health, epidemiology, and wellness. As a child, I had set my sights on becoming a doctor, but as I started to understand the distinction between health and medicine, the population-based, preventative approach to health just made more sense to me and attracted my interest. Meanwhile, I started programming and caught the “bug” for computer science. After I graduated from college, I worked as a software developer, first in mobile, and then in finance. I had no idea there could be a career in health informatics until I stumbled into a job as part of a research group at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Clark Freifeld is a lecturer in the Khoury College of Computer Science at Northeastern University. His research focuses on applications of computing technology and artificial intelligence to the improvement of population health. He also serves as an affiliate faculty member at the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children’s Hospital. Freifeld has co-authored over twenty journal articles and co-founded and overseen a range of health informatics projects. His projects include: HealthMap, a global disease surveillance platform; MedWatcher, a medical product safety monitoring system; and StreetRx, a crowdsourcing tool for understanding black market pharmaceutical transactions.
Freifeld’s work has been used by millions of people and supported by public health agencies including CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and FDA, as well as being recognized by the Smithsonian and Library of Congress. Before joining the faculty at Northeastern, Freifeld was co-founder and chief technology officer of Epidemico, a health informatics spinout from Boston Children’s and MIT, now a division of Booz Allen Hamilton.
Boston, MA.
My educational background has been interdisciplinary throughout my career: my undergraduate major was in computer science and mathematics combined; I earned my master’s at the MIT Media Lab in a group focused on applications of technology for health and wellness; and my PhD in biomedical engineering synthesized elements of computer science and epidemiology.
My research applies information technology and computer science techniques to problems in health, epidemiology, and wellness. As a child, I had set my sights on becoming a doctor, but as I started to understand the distinction between health and medicine, the population-based, preventative approach to health just made more sense to me and attracted my interest. Meanwhile, I started programming and caught the “bug” for computer science. After I graduated from college, I worked as a software developer, first in mobile, and then in finance. I had no idea there could be a career in health informatics until I stumbled into a job as part of a research group at Boston Children’s Hospital.
