Yuval Shahar, M.D., Ph.D Closed Now

Yuval Shahar, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-scientist and computer scientist widely recognized for his pioneering work in clinical decision support systems (CDSS), knowledge-based systems, and temporal reasoning in medicine. Early in his career, Dr. Shahar collaborated closely with Edward H. Shortliffe at Stanford University, where he contributed to groundbreaking research in medical informatics and artificial intelligence in healthcare.

One of his most notable contributions is the development of temporal abstraction methods, which allow health data systems to interpret and reason over time-oriented clinical data. This advancement has been essential in enabling computer-based decision-making tools to handle longitudinal patient records, improving their ability to support physicians in managing chronic diseases and complex clinical scenarios.

Dr. Shahar’s research has had lasting impact on both the theory and practical applications of biomedical informatics, influencing the design of modern electronic health records (EHRs), knowledge representation frameworks, and AI-driven clinical systems. His work emphasized how computational reasoning can be directly applied to patient care, bridging the gap between data science and bedside decision-making.

Currently, Dr. Shahar is a Professor of Medical Informatics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, where he founded and directs the Medical Informatics Research Center (MIRU). Under his leadership, MIRU has become internationally recognized for its contributions to knowledge-based systems, temporal data modeling, and patient-centered decision support.

Over the years, Dr. Shahar has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and has been a frequent collaborator with international experts, carrying forward the early vision of his work with Shortliffe into practical health informatics systems that improve real-world clinical practice.