Florida State University School of Information professor Zhe He has received two major honors for his work in health informatics.
He was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) and awarded a $280,000 grant from the National a2 Pilot Awards Competition, funded by the National Institute on Aging.
“Dr. Zhe He has been an extraordinary colleague from the moment he joined the FSU faculty,” said Dean Michelle Kazmer of the College of Communication and Information. “He is an excellent teacher and mentor, a committed member of the university community and has conducted transformational research in the area of health informatics. Dr. He, along with his students and research colleagues across the globe, has done foundational research and systems design to improve health outcomes for everyone. I am grateful and proud that he is a member of the faculty in the College of Communication and Information.”
IAHSI recognizes global leaders who advance healthcare through research, education, and innovation. This year, the academy named 18 Fellows worldwide, including 11 from North America.
“Being elected as a Fellow of the IAHSI is an incredible honor and a deeply humbling experience,” He said. “It represents international recognition of the work I’ve done over the past 17 years to advance biomedical and health informatics.”
He’s research focuses on the intersection of biomedical and health informatics, artificial intelligence and big data analytics, and he serves as the director of the FSU Institute for Successful Longevity; director of the UF-FSU CTSA Biostatistics, Informatics, and Research Design Program; and chair of the AMIA Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Working Group.
He first connected with IAHSI through his involvement with the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), which founded IAHSI in 2017. Over the years, he has presented research, organized panels, and collaborated with scholars internationally through IMIA conferences.
“He is an excellent teacher and mentor, a committed member of the university community and has conducted transformational research in the area of health informatics. Dr. He, along with his students and research colleagues across the globe, has done foundational research and systems design to improve health outcomes for everyone.”
– Dean Michelle Kazmer, College of Communication and Information
“I was both surprised and honored to be nominated and elected by such a distinguished group of peers whose work I have long admired,” He said.
As a Fellow, He aims to support the academy’s goal of advancing health sciences informatics by strengthening global collaboration on pressing issues like climate change, aging and the ethical use of artificial intelligence in health care. He also looks forward to working with international colleagues on leadership practices, sharing knowledge and building the capacity of low-resource settings and communities.
In addition to his IAHSI Fellowship, He was recently awarded a one-year $280,000 research grant from the National a2 Pilot Awards Competition, hosted annually by the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) for Aging Research Program and funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
The grant supports his project, “Developing a Multi-Agent AI System for Explaining Lab Results to Older Adults,” which is part of his ongoing research initiative, LabGenie.
“This recognition underscores the importance of addressing the unique challenges older adults and their caregivers face in interpreting lab test results,” He said.
He began working with the National Institute on Aging through research on health and aging, collaborating with clinicians, behavioral scientists, and computer scientists. He has also earned two other NIA grants for projects on clinical trial optimization and personalized AI tools.
He hopes LabGenie will expand to include symptom tracking, contextual insight generation, patient portal integration, and shared decision-making support, making lab results more comprehensive and accessible for older patients and their caregivers.
“My hope is that LabGenie becomes a model for how AI can enhance patient engagement for those with varying health literacy levels and improve outcomes, especially for older adults with multiple chronic conditions,” He said.
For more information about FSU’s College of Communication and Information, visit cci.fsu.edu.