The University of Chicago Medicine has appointed Josh Denny, MD, MS, as its inaugural Vice Dean, Senior Vice President for AI, Precision Medicine, and Chief Data Officer. According to a press release from the University of Chicago Medicine, this strategic recruitment brings a veteran physician-scientist to the institution to bridge the gap between clinical data, genomic research, and computational biology.
Denny arrives from the National Institutes of Health, where he served as the chief executive officer of the All of Us Research Program since 2020. His tenure at the NIH involved overseeing a massive, integrated resource of electronic health records and genomic data designed to facilitate large-scale biomedical discovery.
His professional history includes over two decades at Vanderbilt University, where he held roles as a professor of biomedical informatics and medicine. He also served as the founding director of the Center for Precision Medicine at Vanderbilt, where he pioneered the use of electronic health records for genomic research.
A notable contribution from his time at Vanderbilt was the development of phenome-wide association studies, known as PheWAS. This methodology reverses traditional genetic research logic by starting with a genetic variant and scanning comprehensive medical records to identify associated conditions, a process that has since become standard in the field.
The clinical application of PheWAS allows researchers to uncover pleiotropy, where a single genetic variant influences multiple, seemingly unrelated traits. By systematically querying electronic health records, clinicians can identify patients who may harbor undiagnosed genetic conditions, thereby facilitating earlier interventions and more precise therapeutic strategies.
Under his leadership at the NIH, the All of Us Research Program enrolled nearly 900,000 participants across the United States. The program generated more than 535,600 whole genome sequences and established a significant repository of longitudinal wearable data for research purposes.
Integrating longitudinal wearable data into hospital systems presents significant technical challenges, including the need for standardized data pipelines and robust privacy frameworks. Denny’s experience in managing these datasets at a national scale provides a template for how academic health systems can ingest high-frequency sensor data to monitor patient health in real-time.
Denny also oversaw the return of personalized genetic results to over 277,000 participants, including pharmacogenomic findings that inform medication response. His work has been recognized through his election to the National Academy of Medicine and his receipt of the American Medical Informatics Association’s PINA Clinical Informatics Physician Innovator Award.
The appointment aligns with the University of Chicago Medicine’s Elevate 2035 strategic plan, which seeks to integrate disciplinary strengths in computation and biology. Mark Anderson, Dean of the Biological Sciences Division, noted that the move is intended to strengthen connections between the university’s research, clinical, and technology enterprises.
Tom Jackiewicz, President of the University of Chicago Health System, emphasized that Denny’s expertise will support the development of next-generation academic healthcare capabilities. This includes integrating advanced data approaches into clinical settings, such as the upcoming AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion, to translate scientific innovation into direct patient care.
The integration of these technologies aims to address the complexities of modern medicine by leveraging UChicago’s existing strengths in physical sciences and computation. By centralizing leadership in AI and precision medicine, the institution intends to accelerate the translation of laboratory findings into clinical practice.
Future efforts will likely focus on scaling these informatics capabilities across the health system to improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment personalization. Observers will monitor how Denny’s experience with national-scale data resources translates to the specific clinical and research environment at the University of Chicago.
