From Algorithms to Outcomes: Aaron Boussina, Ph.D., is Bringing Real-Time AI to the Bedside

Aaron Boussina, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego Health and systems builder at the forefront of clinical innovation. Today, he also leads groundbreaking work at the Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (JCHI) AI Lab. His mission is to bring real-time, evidence-based AI into clinical practice to improve patient and provider experience, achieve better outcomes, and reduce preventable deaths. 

At JCHI, he is helping shape the future of AI integration in healthcare systems by focusing not just on building algorithms, but on building trustworthy, reliable systems that address real needs. He says he enjoys working alongside other innovators at JCHI, which brings together passionate innovators from distinct and various disciplines united by a shared purpose to improve healthcare. 

“It’s electric to see economists, bioengineers, oncologists, etc, tackling the same big problems from different angles,” says Dr. Boussina, also a JCHI Faculty Affiliate. 

He adds that JCHI plays a pivotal role in enabling clinical AI work that wouldn’t be possible in a traditional academic lab.

“JCHI bridges research and practice by supercharging the implementation of novel technology into clinical workflows to address real needs. The demand-driven, health system-scale nature of JCHI makes it a unique ecosystem to be a part of.”

Before joining UC San Diego, he spent years in biotech and pharma automation, including at Illumina, where he built robotic systems, but felt too far removed from direct patient impact. This inspired a pivot to clinical trials, where he supported data-driven drug safety decisions. 

That experience, combined with his background in bioinformatics and chemical engineering, led him to pursue a Ph.D. under Dr. Shamim Nemati, where he helped translate AI models like COMPOSER from research to bedside. 

In 2022, his team deployed a real-time sepsis prediction tool at UC San Diego Health, demonstrating a 17% reduction in sepsis mortality. This work was featured in Nature Digital Medicine, Fortune, KPBS, and referenced in the Bipartisan House Task Force Report on AI (118^th Congress). 

Dr. Boussina’s research has earned national attention, including authoring a study published in NEJM AI showing how large language models can automate hospital quality reporting with 90% accuracy.

Looking ahead, he sees powerful potential in the rapid evolution of multimodal AI. He believes that as these systems become more advanced, they could transform cancer care by detecting the disease earlier than ever before, opening the door to timely, life-saving interventions.

“At Moores Cancer Center, I’m working with Diane Simeone, Jessica Everrett, and Ludmil Alexandrov to harness this potential and improve the standard of care for pancreatic cancer,” he says.

In fact, Dr. Boussina was recently awarded as the inaugural fellow of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center’s AI and Precision Oncology Fellowship, supported by Illumina, to advance his work in artificial intelligence – driven cancer research and early detection. 

As AI in healthcare continues to evolve, Dr. Boussina remains focused on ensuring that innovation translates into meaningful clinical impact. For him, the goal is not simply to build smarter algorithms, but to create systems clinicians can trust: tools that integrate seamlessly into care delivery and make a measurable difference in patients’ lives.

At JCHI, he has found the ideal environment to do just that: a collaborative ecosystem where bold ideas move beyond theory and into practice. By uniting engineers, clinicians and researchers around shared, real-world challenges, Dr. Boussina is helping redefine what is possible in modern medicine.