CEH Webinar 2/26/2026 Wesley Marrero

Title:

Data-Driven Decision Making in Healthcare Applications: From organ transplantation and robotic surgery to mental health and cardiovascular disease

Abstract:

The increasing availability of healthcare data has provided a great opportunity to develop data-driven models to guide health policy and medical practice. This talk presents new methods that use these data to make better healthcare decisions at a population and patient level. I will first give an overview of my team’s previous and current work on organ transplantation, robotic surgery, breast cancer, and mental health. Subsequently, I will present modeling approaches to consider the intuition or preferences of physicians and their patients in implementing treatment protocols. To illustrate how these methods can be implemented in medical practice, my team and I found interpretable and flexible antihypertensive treatment choices for over 16 million adults in the US. This research has the potential to improve healthcare practice by giving achievable guidelines to policymakers and medical professionals based on patient and population-level data.

Short Biography:

Professor Marrero’s research interest lies in developing decision-support tools that consider the challenges associated with their implementation in practice, such as complex interdependencies, irrational behavior, lack of interpretability, and need for flexibility. To this end, he designs and applies techniques from operations research and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on simulation and optimization. His current work addresses various application areas, including cardiovascular disease, general surgery, mental health, behavioral health, breast cancer, neonatology, opioid use disorder, organ transplantation, and aeromedical evacuation. Through this research, Dr. Marrero has ongoing collaborations with Dartmouth Health, the Geisel School of Medicine, the Methodist Health System, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the University of Michigan Medical School and School of Public Health.

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