Benjamin Collins, MD, MA, MS

Dr. Benjamin Collins is assistant professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Medicine with a secondary appointment as assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC. He was formerly a postdoctoral fellow in ethics, legal and social issues of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care working with the Biomedical Informatics and Biomedical Ethics departments. He is also a graduate of the clinical informatics fellowship program at Oregon Health & Science University, where he also earned an MS in Biomedical Informatics with a capstone project completed on the development of an online training module for clinicians on algorithmic bias in health care.

Clinically, he is a graduate of the Temple University Hospital internal medicine residency program and practices as a hospitalist. During residency, he also earned an MA in Urban Bioethics from Temple with a thesis on, “A Theory of Sociotechnical Justice in Healthcare.” He is interested in the use of AI to support the functions of clinical decision support and to improve health care and outcomes for all. This includes working to ensure that AI does not contribute to healthcare outcome differences through qualitative research, community engagement, and improving clinician education and training in the use of AI. Outside of informatics he is also interested in medical education, narrative medicine and medical philosophy and is active as a volunteer in AMIA.

In November 2022, Dr. Collins was awarded the 2022 Academic Forum Best Paper Award for his paper "Development of an Online Training Module on Algorithmic Bias in Health Care for Clinicians" at the AMIA 2022 Annual Symposium."