Saptarshi Purkayastha, PhD

Contact : saptpurk@iu.edu

By harnessing technology to create open-source tools that empower healthcare providers in resource-limited environments, we impact the health of people around the world.

Initiatives

Research Scientist, Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, IU Indianapolis
Program Director – Health Informatics
Faculty Associate, STEM Education Innovation and Research Institute (SEIRI)

Dr. Saptarshi Purkayastha is a tenured associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics at Indiana University Indianapolis’ Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, where he has served as program director of health informatics since 2022. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (2015) and both M.S. and B.S. degrees from the University of Mumbai.

Dr. Purkayastha’s research focuses on health informatics, artificial intelligence in healthcare and electronic health record systems with particular emphasis on applications for resource-limited settings. He directs the Purkayastha Lab for Health Innovation, focusing on translating technology innovation to improve healthcare delivery. His funded research includes significant grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Gates Foundation, including a recent $1.1M NIH grant for developing a hive learning approach to imaging and multimodal data for resource-limited institutions. He has published extensively in prestigious journals including The Lancet Digital Health, EBioMedicine and IEEE Journal of Biomedical Health Informatics.

Dr. Purkayastha is actively involved in open-source healthcare software development, leading the LibreHealth initiative and serving as a Google Summer of Code mentor organization administrator. He has substantial international experience, having worked with the World Health Organization on health information systems in several countries. His teaching spans both undergraduate and graduate courses in health informatics, database design and biomedical analytics, and he has mentored numerous graduate students throughout his career.

Featured Projects

Developing a Hive Learning and Datathon Supported Course on Imaging and Multimodal Data for Resource-Limited Institutions (CIMDAR-HIVE)

Funder: NIH/OD

Role: MPI (Multiple Principal Investigator)

Duration: 01/2025 – 01/2028

Creating a collaborative learning platform for healthcare professionals in resource-limited settings to gain expertise in medical imaging and multimodal dataanalysis, with an emphasis on data-driven approaches and hands-on learning experiences.

FW-HTF-RM: Measuring learning gains in man-machine assemblage when augmenting radiology work with artifi cial intelligence

Funder: NSF ENG/EFMA

Role: Principal Investigator

Duration: 09/2019 – 08/2022

Investigating how radiologists learn and adapt when working alongside AI tools, measuring effi ciency, accuracy, and clinical impact of human-AI collaboration indiagnostic radiology workfl ows.

SuperAssist: Client-Centered Supervision Assist App for Mental Health Providers to Improve Job Well-being and Quality of Care

Funder: NIH/NIMH

Role: Co-Investigator

Duration: 04/2024 – 01/2027

Developing a mobile application to support mental health providers with supervision tools, aiming to improve job satisfaction and enhance the quality of patient carethrough better clinical decision support.

R25 - DataWiz-IN scholars program for Biomedical Informatics workforce in Indiana

Funder: NIH/NLM

Role: MPI

Duration: 09/2022-08/2027

Training program developing biomedical informatics workforce in Indiana, focusing on data science skills and health IT competencies for healthcare professionals.

Center for Biologics Evaluation Research: BEST Task Order 2

Funder: US FDA

Role: Co-Investigator

Duration: 10/2019-09/2020

Analyzing patterns of blood product utilization in healthcare systems using EHR data, identifying trends in platelet and red blood cell transfusions to inform policyand practice.

Highlighted Publications

June 2022

AI recognition of patient race in medical imaging: a modelling study

Publication: The Lancet Digital Health

DOI: 10.1016/S2589-7500(22)00063-2

Authors: Gichoya JW, Banerjee I, Bhimireddy AR, Burns JL, Celi LA, Chen LC, Correa R, Dullerud N, Ghassemi M, Huangj S, Kuo P, Lungren MP, Palmer LJ, Price BJ, Purkayastha S, Pyrros AT, Oakden-Rayner L, Okechukwu C, Seyyed-Kalantari L, Trivedi H, Wang R, Zaiman Z, Zhang H

June 2023

Ethics of large language models in medicine and medical research

Publication: The Lancet Digital Health

DOI: 10.1016/S2589-7500(23)00083-3

Authors: Li H, Moon JT, Purkayastha S, Celi LA, Trivedi H, Gichoya JW

Feb 2024

Theory of radiologist interaction with instant messaging decision support tools: a sequential-explanatory study

Publication: PLOS Digital Health

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0000297

Authors: Burns JL, Gichoya JW, Kohli MD, Jones J, Purkayastha S

May 2023

MedShift: Automated Identification of Shift Data for Medical Image Dataset Curation

Publication: IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics

DOI: 10.1109/jbhi.2023.3275104

Authors: Guo X, Gichoya JW, Trivedi H, Purkayastha S, Banerjee I

Dec 2024

Development and validation of the DHIS2 platform for integrating sociomedical data to study wound care outcomes

Publication: PLOS One

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308553

Authors: Paddo AR, Kodela S, Timsina L, Mathew-Steiner SS, Purkayastha S, Sen CK

July 2023

"Shortcuts" causing bias in radiology artifi cial intelligence: causes, evaluation and mitigation

Publication: Journal of the American College of Radiology

DOI: 10.1016/j.jacr.2023.06.025

Authors: Banerjee I, Bhattacharjee K, Burns JL, Trivedi H, Purkayastha S, Seyyed-Kalantari L, Patel BN, Shiradkar R, Gichoya J

Aug 2023

The Telehealth Dilemma—Health-Care Deserts Meet the Internet's Remote Regions

Publication: Computer

DOI: 10.1109/MC.2023.3252945

Authors: Kathiravelu P, Fonović D, Grbac TG, Zaiman Z, Veiga L, Gichoya JW, Purkayastha S, Mahmoudi B

May 2024

Measuring Impact of Radiologist-AI Collaboration: Effi ciency, Accuracy, and Clinical Impact

Publication: IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging

DOI: 10.1109/ISBI56570.2024.10635618

Authors: Purkayastha S, Isaac R, Veldandi A, Saxena R, Singh P, Vaswani P, Krupinski EA, Danish JA, Gichoya JW

Jan 31, 2025

DICOM LUT is a Key Step in Medical Image Preprocessing Towards AI Generalizability

Publication: Journal of Imaging Informatics in Medicine

DOI: 10.1007/s10278-025-01418-5

Authors: Dapamede T, Li F, Khosravi B, Purkayastha S, Trivedi H, Gichoya J

Nov 2023

Ability of artifi cial intelligence to identify self-reported race in chest x-ray using pixel intensity counts

Publication: Journal of Medical Imaging

DOI: 10.1117/1.JMI.10.6.061106

Authors: Burns JL, Zaiman Z, Vanschaik J, Luo G, Peng L, Price B, Mathias G, Mittal V, Sagane A, Tignanelli C, Chakraborty S, Gichoya JW, Purkayastha Sv

June 2024

Synthetically enhanced: unveiling synthetic data's potential in medical imaging research

Publication: EBioMedicine

DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105174

Authors: Khosravi B, Li F, Dapamede T, Rouzrokh P, Gamble CU, Trivedi HM, Wyles CC, Sellergren AB, Purkayastha S, Erickson BJ, Gichoya JW

June 2023

Improving Health Informatics Competencies Using an Open-source Educational EHR

Publication: IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics

DOI: 10.1109/ICHI57859.2023.00112

Authors: Purkayastha S, Fulton C, Ratna S

In The News

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Saptarshi Purkayastha, PhD

Featured Projects

Highlighted Publications