Susan Shortreed, PhD

“By using rich data sources such as electronic health records, we can begin to identify which treatments will work best for which people.”

Susan M. Shortreed, PhD

Senior Biostatistics Investigator, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Affiliate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington

Susan.M.Shortreed@kp.org
206-287-2088

Curriculum vitae (CV)

Biography

Susan Shortreed, PhD, uses statistics and machine learning methods to address health science problems, with a special emphasis on analyzing complex longitudinal data. She develops and evaluates statistical approaches for observational data, and works to improve the design and analyses of studies that use data collected from electronic health care records. She is leading a project to develop statistical methods for constructing personalized treatment strategies using data captured from electronic health records.

Dr. Shortreed earned her PhD in statistics from the University of Washington. Then she spent two years in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and two years in the School of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Shortreed has collaborated with scientists in a broad range of areas including alcohol use, cancer screening, and medication safety. She now works alongside researchers in mental and behavioral health, evaluating and comparing treatments for chronic pain and depression, and interventions to prevent suicide. Dr. Shortreed is an investigator with the Mental Health Research Network, designing studies to address important public health concerns, such as determining which antidepressant medications work best for which patients and developing risk prediction algorithms to identify individuals who may be at increased risk for suicidal behavior.

Dr. Shortreed is also an affiliate professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health. She served on the executive board for the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics in Epidemiology and the editorial board of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C: Applied Statistics.

Research interests and experience

Biostatistics

Design and analysis of studies that use data collected from electronic health records; analysis of complex longitudinal data; methods for constructing personalized treatment strategies, computational statistics and algorithms; machine learning; variable selection methods.

Medication Use & Patient Safety

Biostatistics; machine learning; using data collected from electronic health records to study rare adverse events; opioid safety; medication safety in pregnancy.
Mental Health

Biostatistics; treatment for chronic depression; suicide prevention; developing personalized treatment strategies; developing risk prediction models.

Recent publications

Shortreed SM, Peeters A, Forbes AB. Estimating the effect of long-term physical activity on cardiovascular disease and mortality: evidence from the Framingham Heart Study. Heart. 2013 May;99(9):649-54. doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2012-303461. Epub 2013 Mar 8. PubMed

Turner JA, Shortreed SM, Saunders KW, Leresche L, Berlin JA, Korff MV. Optimizing prediction of back pain outcomes. Pain. 2013 Aug;154(8):1391-401. doi:10.1016/j.pain.2013.04.029. Epub 2013 Apr 18. PubMed

Wheeler DC, Burstyn I, Vermeulen R, Yu K, Shortreed SM, Pronk A, Stewart PA, Colt JS, Baris D, Karagas MR, Schwenn M, Johnson A, Silverman DT, Friesen MC. Inside the black box: starting to uncover the underlying decision rules used in a one-by-one expert assessment of occupational exposure in case-control studies. Occup Environ Med. 2013 Mar;70(3):203-10. doi: 10.1136/oemed-2012-100918. Epub 2012 Nov 15. PubMed

McClure JB, Shortreed SM, Bogart A, Derry H, Riggs K, St John J, Nair V, An L. The effect of program design on engagement with an internet-based smoking intervention: randomized factorial trial. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Mar 25;15(3):e69. doi: 10.2196/jmir.2508. PubMed

McClure JB, Derry H, Riggs KR, Westbrook EW, St John J, Shortreed SM, Bogart A, An L. Questions about quitting (Q(2)): design and methods of a Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) randomized screening experiment for an online, motivational smoking cessation intervention. Contemp Clin Trials. 2012 Sep;33(5):1094-102. Epub 2012 Jul 4. PubMed

Rutter CM, Shortreed SM. Writing a clinically appraised topic is a team sport. Acad Radiol. 2012 Jul;19(7):777-8. PubMed

Shortreed SM, Moodie EE. Estimating the optimal dynamic antipsychotic treatment regimen: evidence from the sequential multiple-assignment randomized CATIE Schizophrenia Study. J R Stat Soc Ser C Appl Stat. 2012;61(4):577-99. Epub 2012 May 31. PubMed

Shortreed SM, Laber E, Lizotte DJ, Stroup TS, Pineau J, Murphy SA. Informing sequential clinical decision-making through reinforcement learning: an empirical study. Mach Learn. 2011;84(1-2):109-136. PubMed

Abdullah A, Stoelwinder J, Shortreed S, Wolfe R, Stevenson C, Walls H, de Courten M, Peeters A. The duration of obesity and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Public Health Nutr. 2011 Jan;14(1):119-26. Epub 2010 Jun 29. PubMed

Urquhart DM, Shortreed S, Davis SR, Cicuttini FM, Bell RJ. Are low levels of low back pain intensity and disability associated with reduced well-being in community-based women? Climacteric. 2009 Jun;12(3):266-75. PubMed