BIDMC’s Elliot Chaikof, MD, PhD, Surgeon-in-Chief, to Serve on New National Academy of Medicine Committee

Boston, Mass. – Elliot Chaikof, MD, PhD, Surgeon-in-Chief and Chair of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), has been selected to serve on the National Academy of Medicine’s newly established Committee on Emerging Science, Technology and Innovation in health and medicine (CESTI).  The committee will assess the landscape of emerging scientific advances and technologies in health and medicine and address the potential societal, ethical, legal and workforce implications of such technologies, with the goal of developing a multi-sectoral governance framework.

Advances in biomedical science, data science, engineering and technology are leading to high-pace innovation with tremendous potential to transform health and medicine.  Recent examples include artificial intelligence in health care, human genome-editing technologies and new neural technologies, such as brain implants.  At the same time, these breakthroughs carry risks and have important implications for society, with particular concerns related to the speed of adoption, the ability to control costs of care and the potential to exacerbate inequities and challenge social norms and ethics. CESTI comprises individuals representing perspectives from health, biomedical science, ethics, social sciences, law, regulation and other disciplines.  

“I am honored to have been selected to serve alongside esteemed colleagues representing a wide range of expertise,” said Chaikof, who is also the Johnson and Johnson Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member of the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering of Harvard University, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I look forward to sharing perspectives from our various fields and working together to help guide the future development of emerging technologies for the collective good.”

Chaikof’s basic and translational research interests lie at the interface of medicine, engineering and chemistry. Leading collaborative research efforts, he has designed new strategies that have advanced the development of new drugs, engineered living tissues, as well as cell-based therapies, which have helped to define the evolving field of regenerative medicine.

Chaikof has published more than 300 articles in leading academic journals. His leadership of clinical units and large projects that span and bring together schools of medicine and engineering and constituency organizations has contributed to public policy designed to improve the quality of care of the surgical patient.