Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University have received a grant of nearly $750,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create the Center for Humanities-based Health AI Innovation (CHHAIN). The new center will be based at Baylor’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, in partnership with Rice’s Medical Humanities Research Institute.
The initiative is set to run for three years and aims to bring humanities research into the development of health artificial intelligence technologies. Dr. Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, assistant professor at Baylor, and Dr. Kirsten Ostherr, director at Rice, will co-direct CHHAIN. They will lead a team of scholars from both institutions and collaborate with partners throughout Houston.
“For AI to truly improve health outcomes, it must be designed with patient trust and wellbeing at its core,” said Rahimzadeh. “CHHAIN will provide a dedicated space to explore critical bioethics questions, such as how we ensure AI respects patient autonomy, addresses the needs of undeserved communities and integrates meaningfully into clinical care. Our goal is to translate these insights into real-world health settings where AI is already shaping patient experiences."
The project will also work with Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute to connect research with public engagement and policy impact.
This effort builds on earlier collaboration between Baylor and Rice that was supported by pilot funding from Baylor’s Margaret M. and Albert B. Alkek Department of Medicine as well as a grant from Rice's Provost's TMC Collaborator Fund. These initial investments helped define CHHAIN’s research direction by showing how cross-institutional support can advance work at the intersection of medicine, technology, and ethics.
“CHHAIN represents a bold new model for integrating the humanities into health innovation,” said Ostherr. “It will create a collaborative space where humanities scholars, patients, developers and clinicians can come together to explore the human dimensions of health AI—trust, narrative, and lived experience. These are essential perspectives that are too often missing from technology development, and CHHAIN is designed to change that."
CHHAIN plans to develop a national approach for including humanities in designing health AI systems by advancing research, translating findings into clinical practice and policy, and engaging the public through education.
The NEH awarded grants to 97 humanities projects across the country this year; more information about these awards can be found on their website: https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-415-million-97-humanities-projects-nationwide.
