Richard A. Taylor, MD

Richard Andrew Taylor, MD, MHS, is an emergency medicine physician who says he was drawn to his specialty because of its variety.

“I knew I liked too many things and what I love about emergency medicine is that it’s always new,” Dr. Taylor says. “You get to see every aspect of human life. You see people at their happiest and saddest moments and all the emotional states in between, plus every possible condition in medicine.”

Realizing that a trip to the emergency department can be scary for patients, Dr. Taylor says he remains calm and takes the time to give patients a picture of what’s going on. “I explain what their medical condition might mean, what possible outcomes are and answer any questions they have,” he says. “I want them to understand what the next steps are and what they need to know if they are being admitted or discharged.”

Dr. Taylor’s research interests focus on applying artificial intelligence and data science to solve problems in emergency medicine. This includes using machine learning (a branch of artificial intelligence) to predict future trends and outcomes, natural language processing to analyze text, and computer vision to process biomedical imaging.

The emergency room, Dr. Taylor says, is a natural fit for the the continuing advances being made in data sciences. “It is a fast-paced, high-volume setting where decisions have to made quickly,” he says. “Some of these technologies have the potential to improve care and reduce the cognitive burden.”