Hello, I’m Joyce Lee. I am the Robert P. Kelch, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at Michigan Medicine and I am a Physician and Clinical Informaticist. I deliver leader-centered analytics and collaborative systems to help healthcare leaders take action towards their goals.

What I Do

I am the Robert P. Kelch, MD Professor of Pediatrics at Michigan Medicine. I serve as Clinical Domain Oversight Officer for Adult and Pediatric Medical Specialties and Psychiatry, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, and Senior Medical Director of Clinical Analytics for the UM Medical Group.

My work centers on integrating and finance, workforce, and electronic health record clinical data enterprise data and into trustworthy high-quality data products and data visualizations that deliver human-centered, leader-centered insights. With that data, I establish systems of collaboration between departmental, operational, quality, and translational research leaders to turn those insights into action, and deliver on enterprise goals around access, financial performance, and patient outcomes.

This requires investment in robust data governance, leadership-centered development and delivery of data products, data literacy training and tools for increasing leadership trust in data, and most importantly, creating aligned enterprise metrics to support effective collaboration between Departments, Divisions and Operational Leadership.

I am board-certified in Clinical Informatics and I am an Epic Physician Builder with expertise in the Epic Analytics Suite and Business Analytics. I was a visiting scholar at the former Verily and served on the medical advisory board for GoodRx. In 2024, I completed the Drexel University Executive Leadership in Health Care program, a branch of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM) program and in 2025 was part of the inaugural class of the Health Academy Amazon Web Services Tech Fellowship, a national leadership program for healthcare technology leaders.

My scholarship includes 178 peer-reviewed publications, more than 80 as first or senior author, and multiple NIH-funded projects as Principal Investigator. I direct the Life Course Informatics Core of the Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center, support informatics and data governance for the Caswell Diabetes Institute and the Michigan Collaborative for Type 2 Diabetes, a statewide type 2 diabetes quality collaborative that integrates claims, clinical, and health information exchange data. I am also board-certified in Pediatric Endocrinology with an MPH and formal training in health services research. In 2016, I was the first recipient of the Paul Kaplowitz, MD, Endowed Lectureship, awarded by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pediatric Endocrine Society for contributions to quality and cost-effective care in Pediatric Endocrinology.

For the long version, you can find my CV here. If you share my passions or want to hear my thoughts on the intersection of design and healthcare innovation, please subscribe to my newsletter!

Design

How do I integrate design into my work as a physician, operational and analytics leader, and translational researcher? My approach embraces the framework of learning health systems and participatory design to support a patient-centered model of healthcare research and clinical care delivery. I was honored to share my thoughts about the future of design in the Fast Company Innovation by Design 2021 issue alongside many other leaders whom I admire! Here are some thoughts I shared on Learning Health Systems with the Michigan Medicine LHS Collaboratory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rni6-P-yAs. You can also watch my TEDx Detroit Talk "Participatory Design and the Making of Health".

Writing

I publish academic papers and I blog about design, healthcare, and innovation. Check out my post in Fast Company Design, "Why is Health Care Design So Terrible?" and a recent post about the design of the Epipen: The Role of Metaphor in Design which was featured in a Propublica piece about design. Finally, here is an academic publication about a design workshop we conducted that just came out through the fantastic collaboration of colleagues from Fast Forward Medical Innovation: “A Patient-Centered Design Thinking Workshop to Improve Patient-Provider Communication in Cardiovascular Medicine”.

Research

I am a translational researcher with dual training in Pediatric Endocrinology and Pediatric Health Services Research and a Master in Public Health. I am the Robert P. Kelch Research Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School and I hold a joint appointment at the UM School of Public Health. My research agenda focuses on the creation of Learning Health Systems for pediatric obesity and diabetes, which includes electronic health record workflow redesign, leveraging health IT data, quality improvement, and research innovation. Link to my research page and my CV to learn more about my research and current projects. 

Speaking

I speak at design and innovation conferences (TedX Detroit, Cusp Conference, Stanford Medicine X), healthcare/academic centers (Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute, Brown, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Stanford), federal agencies (Food and Drug Administration) and regional, national, and international healthcare conferences (Detroit Healthcare Leaders Forum, American Diabetes Association, American Association of Diabetes Educators, Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting, World Diabetes Congress) and at internal industry events at companies like Epic. See examples and videos of my talks here.

Social Media

I spend time as a researcher and healthcare professional on social media. I advocate for physicians and other healthcare professionals to be connected online, but I also caution providers need to be careful with these digital tools and their digital identity. 

Check out my Digital Citizenship Guide for more of my ideas on how to incorporate social media as a tool for healthcare.