Guodong "Gordon" Gao Directory Page

Guodong "Gordon" Gao
Dean’s Professor of AI in Healthcare
Co-Director, CHIDS
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Ph.D., M.B.A., is the director of the Health Insights AI Lab, the co-director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS), and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, his MBA from Tsinghua-MIT Sloan joint program, and bachelor’s degrees from Tsinghua University.
His research interests include Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare, health IT, and quality transparency. His work has been published at leading journals like Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (M&SOM), and Production and Operations Management. His work is also published or presented in the healthcare outlets, such as JAMA Internal Medicine, Journal of Medical Internet Research, International Health Economics Association Conference, as well as the American Society of Health Economists conference and AcademyHealth Annual Research meeting.
Dr. Gao’s research has been profiled or featured in popular media such as the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR news, US News and World Report, and Reuters. He currently serves on the editorial board of Management Science. Dr. Gao co-organized the annual Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA). He has won several teaching and research awards, including the Teaching Excellence Award at the Smith School and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.
Research areas
- Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
- Health IT: Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and Mobile Health
- Quality Transparency and Decision Making in Healthcare
Recent talks
- Universität Mannheim, (scheduled)
Germany, Research seminar, 2022 - University of Notre Dame (scheduled)
Distinguished Speaker Series, 2022 - University of Delaware (scheduled)
Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics, 2022 - University of Arizona
Invited talk at the Eller College of Management, 2021 - University of Maryland Baltimore
Invited talk at the Medical School, 2021 - University of Iowa
Invited talk at the Tippie College of Business, 2021 - Temple University
Invited talk at the Fox School of Business, 2020 - University of Minnesota
Invited talk at the Carlson School of Business, 2019 - University of Pittsburgh
Invited talk at the Katz School of Business, 2019 - Penn State University
Invited talk at the College of Health and Human Development, 2019 - University of Utah
Invited talk at the David Eccles School of Business, 2018 - University of Georgia
Invited talk at the College of Public Health (Health Informatics Institute Seminar Series), 2018 - Penn State University
Invited talk at the Smeal College of Business, 2018 - University of Washington
Invited talk at the Foster School of Business, 2017 - University of Michigan State
Invited talk at the Eli Broad College of Business, 2016 - George Mason University
Invited talk at the College of Health and Human Services, 2016 - University of Rochester
Invited talk at the Simon School of Business, 2015 - University of Texas at Dallas
Invited talk at the Jindal School of Business, 2015 - Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Invited talk at Hopkins Grand Rounds Series, Division of Health Sciences Informatics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 2013 - American Board of Internal Medicine
Invited talk at the American Board of Internal Medicine (which certifies more than 200,000 physicians), 2013 - Academy Health
Presented at AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting, 2013 - University of Rochester Medical Center
Invited talk at the Medical School of University of Rochester (Nov 2012) - George Mason Medical Center
Presentation at 10th Annual Southeast Health Economics Study Group (SHESG) conference (Oct 2012) - Lehigh University
Invited talk at Lehigh University's Engineering Solutions in Healthcare Delivery Symposium - Harvard Medical School
Presentation at Medicine 2.0 conference at Harvard Medical School (Sept 2012) - American Society of Health Economists
Presentation at Ashecon (the American Society for Health Economists) 4th Biennial Conference at Univ. of Minnesota (July 2012)
Met many brilliant people from medical schools and school of public health, and started several collaborations.
Awards and Grants
National Institute of Health (NIH)
The CHIDS team partnered with Howard University, MedStar, and Georgetown to win a $16M AIM-AHEAD grant from NIH for advancing AI/ML to enhance health equity. The work will start in late 2021.
Management Science
Associate Editor Meritorious Service Award, 2021
AHRQ
Thanks to AHRQ for its kind support for our Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHIDS) ($150,000, 2021-2023).
University of Maryland
Research Excellence Honoree, 2019
Health Insights AI Lab
I founded the Health Insights AI Lab within CHIDS in 2017. Thanks to Inovalon for the generous support ($300,000) (2017-2021).
Management Science
Associate Editor Meritorious Service Award, 2017
Informs/CIST
Tianshu Sun's paper with Ginger Jin and me on using Mobile Messaging for Offline interactions won the Best Conference Paper Award at Informs/CIST 2015! The paper also won the honorable mention in "Doing Good with Good O.R. Student Competition" Award. Congratulations to Tianshu for all the outstanding job!
Science Daily
My work on doctor ratings is reported at Science Daily.
Wall Street Journal
WSJ reported some of our findings on doctor ratings.
National Science Foundation
I won a National Science Foundation CAREER award with a grant of $417,108 (2013-2018) to study innovative mechanisms in improving healthcare quality transparency and informing consumer choice.
Quote from NSF website: "The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research."
US News and World Report, WebMD, Health Magazine, MedicineNet, Yahoo Health, NY Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, etc.
2014: My comments and research on doctor ratings are profiled in the above media
National Public Radio 2013
My research is cited at the National Public Radio (NPR)
Association of Information Systems (AIS)
I gave a webinar to AIS members on research in health IT. If you are an AIS member, the access to the archived video should be free.
Reuters 2012
Reuters health profiled my study on doctor ratings.
The Washington Post, 2012
Our doctor rating research is profiled in the "health and science" section of the Washington Post, July 3rd of the print version. Just in time for the holiday.
CHOM Best Paper Award, 2012
Our paper "Life is all About Timing: An Examination of Differences in Treatment Quality for Trauma Patients Based on Hospital Arrival Time" is selected the finalist for the College of Health Operations Management (CHOM) Best Paper Award, out of 125 submissions. Thanks to my co-authors David Anderson and Professor Bruce Golden.
Diana Forsythe Award 2012
Our paper "Evolving Work Routines: Adaptive Routinization of Information Technology in Healthcare," published at Information Systems Research, 2011, is selected as a finalist for the 2012 Diana Forsythe Award. This Award is sponsored by the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), to recognize outstanding published work at the intersection of medical informatics and the social sciences. Thanks to my co-authors JM Goh and Ritu Agarwal.
Dingman Center Best Paper Award, 2011
Our paper "The Value of Trust Seals for Online Entrepreneurs" won the Best Working Paper Award (first place) by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship Research Awards Competition, 2011. Thanks to my co-authors Koray Ozpolat, Wolfgang Jank, and Siva Viswanathan.
Editorial
Management Science
I was also appointed as an AE at the Healthcare department of Management Science as an Associate Editor (2020-)
MISQ
Special issue AE for Digital Resilience (2020-)
Information Systems Research
Special issue AE for Digital Resilience (2020-)
Management Science
I was appointed to the editorial board of Management Science as an Associate Editor (2015.1-)
MIS Quarterly
I was appointed to the editorial board of MIS Quarterly as an Associate Editor (2014.1-2015.12)
Palgrave Health Systems
I serve as an Associate Editor for the Palgrave journal Health Systems. I am also co-editing a special issue on health IT and economics (2014)
2nd International Conference on Big Data and Analytics in Healthcare
BDAH 2014
I serve as the program co-chair of BDAH 2014 - 2nd International Conference on Big Data and Analytics in Healthcare
The 16th International Conference on Electronic Commerce
ICEC 2014
I serve as the health IT track co-chair at the16th International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC 2014)
Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA)
CHITA 2010-2020
Each year we organize the annual CHITA (co-organized with Professors Ritu Agarwal and Jeff McCullough).
AIS department editor for health information systems
I serve as the department editor of the Association for Information Systems, 2012-2014
Facebook Group on Health IT, 2012
I started a Facebook Group on Health IT on behalf of AIS. Please check it out and join if you are interested.
My current research focuses on Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, Big Data in healthcare such as EMR, mHealth, and social media data, and quality transparency mechanisms.
Ongoing projects
- Analyzing EMR data for patient condition identification
- Deep-Learning based EMR data analysis
- mHealth in chronic care and behavioral changes
- Predictive modeling on healthcare costs
Selected Working Papers
- Patient Disease Identification in Clinical Notes using EMR data, with Jinhe Shi et al, IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI) 2018.
- Social Determinants of mHealth Effectiveness: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment (with Weiguang Wang and Yanfang Su).
- Catch Me If You Can—Detecting Fraudulent Online Reviews of Doctors using Deep Learning (with Aishwarya Shukla, Weiguang Wang, and Ritu Agarwal).
- Is It Better to Give Than to Receive? Leveraging Digital Social Connections for Healthy Behavior (with Chewei Liu and Ritu Agarwal).
- "Cost Analysis of Reducing Unnecessary Cranial Computed Tomography Utilization among Children with Minor Blunt Head Trauma", (with Shireen Atabaki, Jiban Khunthia, Ritu Agarwal, James Chamberlain, Roger Ziegler, and Brian Jacobs).
Refereed Publications
- “Socioeconomic Privilege and Political Ideology Are Associated with Racial Disparity in COVID-19 Vaccination.” (With Agarwal, R., Dugas, M., Ramaprasad, J., Luo, J., and Li, G., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (PNAS) 118, no. 33 (August 17, 2021)
- “How Digital Word-of-Mouth Affects Consumer Decision Making: Evidence from a Natural Experiment.” (with Shukla, A., & Agarwal, R.) Management Science, 2020.
- “Reciprocity or Self-Interest? Leveraging Digital Social Connections for Healthy Behavior”, (with Liu, C. W., & Agarwal, R.), MIS Quarterly, Accepted, 2020
- “Emerging technologies and analytics for a new era of value-centered marketing in healthcare”, (with Agarwal, R., Dugas, M., & Kannan, P. K.) Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 9–23. 2020.
- “The Influence of Personality on mHealth Adoption Preference and Active Utilization Among Patients with Diabetes: A Prospective Pilot Study,” ( with Su, J., Dugas, M., Guo, X.,) JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2020
- “Unpacking mHealth interventions: A systematic review of behavior change techniques used in randomized controlled trials assessing mHealth effectiveness” (with Dugas, M., & Agarwal, R. ) 2020. Digital Health, 6
- “Engagement and Outcomes Associated with Contextual Annotation Features of a Digital Health Solution.” (with Dugas, M., Wang, W., Crowley, K. …) Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, December 23, 2020
- "Mobile Messaging for Offline Social Interactions: a Large Field Experiment" (with Tianshu Sun and Ginger Jin), Management Science, 2019.
- Best Conference Paper Award at Informs/CIST 2015, NBER working paper.
- "Unraveling the 'Social' in Social Norms: The Conditioning Effect of User Connectivity" (with Chewei Liu and Ritu Agarwal), Information Systems Research, 2019.
- "Individual Differences in Regulatory Mode Moderate the Effectiveness of a Pilot mHealth Intervention for Diabetes Management among Older Veterans", (with Dugas, M., Crowley, K., Xu, T. Agarwal, R., Krgulanski, A., Steinle, N.), PLOS ONE, 2018.
- How Online Quality Ratings Influence Patients' Choice of Medical Providers: Controlled Experimental Survey Study (with Yaraghi, N., Wang, W., and Agarwal, R.) Journal of Medical Internet Research, forthcoming.
- "A tale of two countries: International comparison of online doctor reviews between China and the United States" (with Haijing Hao, KZ Zhang, and Weiguang Wang), International Journal of Medical Informatics, 2017.
- "The Creation of Social Value: Can an Online Health Community Reduce Rural-Urban Health Disparities?" (with JM Goh and Ritu Agarwal), MIS Quarterly, 2016.
- "Vocal Minority and Silent Majority: How Do Online Ratings Reflect Population Perceptions of Quality?" (with Brad Greenwood, Jeff McCullough, and Ritu Agarwal), MIS Quarterly, 2015.
- "Life Is All About Timing: An Examination of Differences in Treatment Quality for Trauma Patients Based on Hospital Arrival Time" (with David Anderson and Bruce Golden), Production and Operations Management, 23(12) pp2178-2190. doi:10.1111/poms.12236, 2014.
- "Website Ratings of Physicians and Their Quality of Care" (with Bradley Gray, Jonathan Vandergrift, J. L., Jeff McCullough, & Rebecca Lipner. JAMA Internal Medicine, 12–14. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.6291, 2014.
- "Strategic Behavior in Online Reputation Systems: Evidence from eBay", (with Ye, S. and Viswanathan, S.), MIS Quarterly, 2014.
- "Information Technology and Voluntary Quality Disclosure by Hospitals", (with Agarwal, R., Angst, C., Khuntia, J., and McCullough, J.), Decision Support Systems, 2014.
- "The Value of Trust Seals in Online Retailing" (with Koray Ozpolat, Wolfgang Jank, and Siva Viswanathan), Information Systems Research, 2013 (Dingman Center Best Paper Award)
- "A Changing Landscape of Physician Quality Reporting: Analysis of Patients' Online Ratings of Their Physicians Over a 5-Year Period", (with McCullough, J., Agarwal, R., and Jha, A.) Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2012;14(1):e38 (Impact factor: 4.7, ranked #1 in Medical Informatics, and #2 in Health Sciences/Health Services Research).
- "Information Technology and Trademarks: Implications for Product Variety" (with Lorin Hitt), Management Science, 2012 (an earlier working paper version won the first runner up of Best Overall Paper Award at ICIS).
- "Evolving Work Routines: Adaptive Routinization of Information Technology in Healthcare" (with JM Goh and Ritu Agarwal), Information Systems Research,2011 (finalist for the Diana Forsythe Award at AMIA, 2012).
- "The Contingent Effects of Quality Signaling: Evidence from the Indian Offshore IT Services Industry" (with Anand Gopal and Ritu Agarwal), Management Science, 2010.
- "The Digital Transformation of Healthcare: Current Status and the Road Ahead" (with Ritu Agarwal, Catherine DesRoches, and Ashish Jha), Information Systems Research, 2010.
- "Are consumers more likely to contribute online reviews for hit products or niche products?" (with Chris Dellarocas and Ritu Narayan), Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010.
- "Certification in the Indian ITS Offshoring Industry" (with Anand Gopal), Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), 2009.
- "The Maturing Chinese Offshore IT Services Industry: It Takes 10 Years to Sharpen a Sword" (with Erran Carmel and Ning Zhang), MIS Quarterly Executive, 2008.
- (reprinted in the book "China's Emerging Outsourcing Capabilities", edited by Mary C. Lacity and Leslie P. Willcocks and Yingqin Zheng, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
- "Consumer informedness and diverse consumer purchasing behaviors: Traditional mass-market, trading down, and trading out into the long tail" (with Eric Clemons), 2007, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.
- "When Online Review Meets Hyperdifferentiation: a Study of Craft Beer Industry" (with Eric Clemons and Lorin Hitt), Fall 2006, Journal of Management Information Systems.
Awards
- Top 10% Teaching Award of Smith School, University of Maryland (across all courses taught in the 2019-2020 year)
Course and Program Development
Developed the Nation's first Exec Ed Program on AI leadership for Healthcare. Successfully launched the first cohort in May 2021.
AI/ML for Business Leaders
In the process of developing a 6-week online program on AI/ML for business leaders with Dr. Suresh Acharya.
Developed and taught BUDT758B with Anand Gopal: Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. 2015.
Thanks for the teaching grants from Cloudera and Amazon Web Services.
Developed and taught the undergraduate core course BMGT 301: Introduction to Information Systems
Evaluations:
- 2006 Spring: 4.47/5.0 across 90 students
- 2006 Fall: 4.51/5.0 across 140 students.
- 2007 Fall: 4.55/5.0 across 180 students.
- 2008 Fall: 4.57/5.0 across 120 students
BMGT808O: PhD Seminar on Current Research in Information Systems
Teaching evaluation: 4.68/5.0 across 6 students, 2008 Fall (Co-taught with Prof. Joe Bailey and Prof. Xiaoqing Wang)
BUSI622: Managing Digital Businesses and Markets (MBA Selective)
- 2009 Spring: Full-time MBA at College Park. 4.45/5.0 across 30 students.
- 2011 Spring: Part-time MBA at Shady Grove. 4.45/5.0 across 50 students.
- 2011 Spring: Part-time MBA at Baltimore. 4.55/5.0 across 50 students.
- 2012 Spring: Full-time MBA at College Park. 4.45/5.0 across 90 students.
- 2013 Spring: Full-time MBA at College Park. 4.65/5.0 across 72 students.
- 2014 Spring, Full-time MBA at College Park. 4.77/5.0 across 34 students.
News
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Insights

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