Leading precision medicine company GNS Healthcare (GNS) today announced the appointment of Dr. David Sontag to its Strategic Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Sontag's research interests include machine learning and artificial intelligence with a focus on unsupervised learning and causal inference.

"David's expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning will be an invaluable asset to GNS' Strategic Advisory Board," said Colin Hill, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of GNS Healthcare. "This distinguished group of industry leaders helps guide the application of our causal machine learning technology to precisely match the right interventions to patients and dramatically reduce the burden of human disease. It is clear that artificial intelligence and precision medicine are poised to transform healthcare. I can't think of a better time for David to join our team."

Dr. Sontag is Assistant Professor at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Hermann L.F. von Helmholtz Career Development Professor in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), and principal investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Prior to joining MIT faculty in 2017, Sontag served as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Data Science at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 2011 to 2016, and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England from 2010 to 2011. Dr. Sontag received the Sprowls award for outstanding doctoral thesis in Computer Science at MIT in 2010, best paper awards at the conferences Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), and Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), faculty awards from Google, Facebook, and Adobe, and a National Science Foundation Early Career award in 2014. Dr. Sontag received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

"These are exciting times for the fields of machine learning and AI and for the practice of medicine," said Dr. David Sontag. "GNS Healthcare's approach is at the forefront of machine learning, working to truly unlock the full potential of patient data to determine the best available therapy and treatment options. I look forward to working closely with the GNS team and the Strategic Advisory Board."

GNS Healthcare's current SAB is comprised of leading researchers, clinicians and business executives including Atul Butte, MD, PhD; Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD; James Robins, MD; Rob Perez; and Eric Schadt, PhD. Find a full list of GNS SAB members here.

About GNS Healthcare GNS Healthcare applies causal machine learning and simulation technology to predict which treatments will work for which patients, improving individual patient outcomes and the health of populations, while reducing the total cost of care. The GNS technology is based on its MeasureBase™ data integration architecture and patented REFS™ (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation) causal inference and simulation engine. Health plans, bio-pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, foundations, academic medical centers, and self-insured employers use GNS' cloud-based solutions to solve pressing and costly problems including those surrounding metabolic syndrome, medication adherence, end-of-life care, preterm birth, personalized care pathways in specialty care, oncology, and diabetes, new drug target discovery, patient stratification in clinical trials, and more. GNS solutions focus on reducing adverse events, slowing disease progression, and improving therapeutic effectiveness through precision matching that maximizes impact on individual patient health outcomes while reducing wasteful spending and downstream medical costs. For more information, visit: www.gnshealthcare.com.