PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nigam Shah

Also known as Nigam H. Shah

Nigam Shah is a Stanford professor who develops clinical AI and leads AI and data science at Stanford Health Care. He earned a medical degree at Baroda Medical College in 1999 and a molecular medicine PhD at Pennsylvania State University in 2005, then completed biomedical informatics training at Stanford in 2007. His work included a 2017 deep-learning model for palliative care and a patient-data consultation service created in 2018 that became Atropos Health in 2021. He coauthored the FURM framework for assessing clinical AI in 2024 and MedHELM for evaluating medical language models in 2025. He is Stanford Health Care’s chief data scientist, a role he took in March 2022.

Works
726
Citations
38,394
h-index
85
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1999–2007

    Medical and informatics training

    He earns an MBBS in medicine at Baroda Medical College in 1999 and a PhD in molecular medicine at Pennsylvania State University in 2005. He completes postdoctoral training in biomedical informatics at Stanford University in 2007.

  2. 2010

    Research with electronic health records

    In 2010, he builds a research program to make sense of large amounts of electronic health record data. From 2005 to 2010, he works as a postdoctoral researcher and then a staff scientist at Stanford’s Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, focusing on knowledge representation and software systems.

  3. June 2015

    Mining records for drug risks

    As lead author of a study published in June 2015, Shah analyzes electronic health records from nearly 3 million people. The study finds an association between proton-pump inhibitors, used to treat heartburn, and increased heart-attack risk.

  4. 2017

    Deep learning for palliative care

    In 2017, he coauthors “Improving Palliative Care with Deep Learning” with Anand Avati, Kenneth Jung, Stephanie Harman, Lance Downing and Andrew Ng. The work uses a deep neural network trained on electronic health records to predict mortality within 3 to 12 months and identify patients who could benefit from palliative care.

  5. 2018–2021

    A patient-data consultation service

    In 2018, he creates a bedside consultation service that gives clinicians patient outcome summaries on demand. The service becomes the independent company Atropos Health in 2021.

  6. March 2022

    Chief data scientist at Stanford

    In March 2022, he becomes Stanford Health Care’s first chief data scientist. Working with the Stanford Medicine Technology and Digital Solutions team, he leads efforts to integrate AI into patient care, medical research and administrative services.

  7. 2024

    The FURM assessment framework

    He coauthors the FURM framework in 2024 to assess whether AI models are fair, useful and reliable in health care. Developed by Stanford Health Care’s Data Science team, it combines ethical review, usefulness simulations, financial projections and deployment planning with a plan for continued monitoring.

  8. May 2025

    MedHELM for medical language models

    In May 2025, he coauthors MedHELM, a framework for evaluating large language models on medical tasks. Its clinician-validated taxonomy covers five categories, 22 subcategories and 121 tasks, with 35 benchmarks for testing models.

  9. 2026

    Association of American Physicians membership

    He is inducted into the Association of American Physicians in 2026.

  10. As of October 2026

    Stanford clinical AI leadership

    As of October 2026, he is professor of medicine in Computational Medicine and of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, and chief data scientist for Stanford Health Care. He leads the health system’s AI and data science efforts and heads a research group that develops predictive models for patient health.

Career

  1. Since 2022Stanford UniversityChief Data Scientist
  2. Since 2020Stanford UniversityCo-Director, Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine & Imaging (AIMI)
  3. Since 2019Stanford UniversityAssociate Dean for Research, School of Medicine
  4. Since 2013Stanford UniversityAssociate Director, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research
  5. NowStanford UniversityProfessor of Medicine in Computational Medicine, of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Computer Science
  6. From 2021Atropos HealthFounder
  7. Until 2010Stanford UniversityStaff Scientist, Center for Biomedical Informatics Research
  8. 2005–2007Stanford UniversityPostdoctoral Researcher, Center for Biomedical Informatics Research

Education

  1. 2005Pennsylvania State UniversityPhD in Molecular Medicine
  2. 1999Baroda Medical CollegeMBBS in Medicine

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: profiles.stanford.edu, shahlab.stanford.edu.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Nigam Shah yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Introducing Dr. Nigam Shah, Chief Data Scientist at Stanford Health Care, as an Advisor to Define Ventures definevc.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Some heartburn drugs may boost risk of heart attack, study finds med.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Improving Palliative Care with Deep Learning arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. nigam_shah [Shah Lab] shahlab.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Stanford Health Care appoints inaugural chief data scientist med.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. Standing on FURM ground -- A framework for evaluating Fair, Useful, and Reliable AI Models in healthcare systems arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. MedHELM: Holistic Evaluation of Large Language Models for Medical Tasks arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. Nigam H. Shah - BrightSpring Health Services brightspringhealth.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. Leadership | Division of Computational Medicine computationalmedicine.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  11. Michael Pfeffer and Nigam Shah | The Minor Consult | Stanford Medicine med.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.