UNLV Research Group

Advancing Healthcare Through Artificial Intelligence

Our interdisciplinary team at UNLV bridges computer science, nursing, and public health โ€” applying machine learning, NLP, and large-scale data analytics to the most pressing challenges in healthcare delivery.

3+
Active Projects
$500K+
Research Funding
10+
Publications
3
Departments
๐Ÿฅ ๐Ÿ“Š ๐Ÿงฌ ๐Ÿ’Š ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โš•๏ธ ๐Ÿ“‹ ๐Ÿค– Clinical Analytics Genomics Pharma Nursing Policy AI Core
3
Research Projects
3
UNLV Departments
$500K+
Active Funding
4TB
Healthcare Data

Where Computer Science Meets Healthcare

We develop AI-driven tools and analytical frameworks that help clinicians, policymakers, and researchers make better decisions โ€” ultimately improving patient outcomes across diverse populations.

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Machine Learning & NLP

Applying state-of-the-art transformer models and deep learning to clinical text, ICD codes, and healthcare claims data.

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Population Health Analytics

Mining All-Payer Claims Databases and national datasets to reveal patterns in care equity, utilization, and outcomes.

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Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Bridging Computer Science, Nursing, Public Health, and Economics to tackle healthcare's hardest problems together.

Our Projects

From maternal health policy to AI-powered nursing classification, our work spans the full spectrum of healthcare challenges.

Faculty Opportunity Award ยท Active

Pilot Testing an All-Payer Claims Database for Maternal Risk-Appropriate Care

Harnessing a 4TB statewide claims database to identify risk factors for severe maternal morbidity โ€” affecting 50,000+ women annually โ€” and test AI-driven interventions for equitable care.

APCD Maternal Health Machine Learning
NCSBN Research Initiative ยท Active

Artificial Intelligence for Nursing Quality & Practice Improvement

Applying NLP and predictive modeling to nursing administrative data to surface quality insights, identify care gaps, and build scalable classification pipelines for clinical decision support.

NLP Nursing Science NCSBN
Upcoming Research ยท 2025

AI-Driven Classification of Nursing Diagnoses in Administrative Claims Data

A study leveraging transformer-based models (BEHRT) to automatically classify nursing diagnoses from ICD-coded claims โ€” enabling scalable population-level nursing quality research.

Awaiting Review BERT/BEHRT ICD Codes
VR Research Initiative ยท Active

Immersive VR Training for Nursing Edge Cases & Clinical Emergencies

Using UNLV's VR/AR infrastructure, Unity development expertise, and clinical nursing leadership to build immersive simulation environments for rare, high-stakes scenarios nurses may rarely encounter โ€” but must always be ready for.

VR / AR Unity Clinical Simulation

Research Collaborators

An interdisciplinary team spanning nursing, computer science, and public health.

Dr. Jennifer Vanderlaan

Dr. Jennifer Vanderlaan

Associate Professor ยท School of Nursing

A certified nurse-midwife and PhD-trained researcher, Dr. Vanderlaan leads groundbreaking work on maternal risk, risk-appropriate care, and midwifery workforce policy. She bridges clinical expertise with population-level data science.

Maternal Health APCD Nurse-Midwifery
Dr. Kazem Taghva

Dr. Kazem Taghva

Professor ยท Computer Science

A pioneer in information retrieval, OCR, and large-scale database systems, Dr. Taghva leads data engineering and machine learning infrastructure for the team's most computationally demanding projects.

NLP / OCR Data Engineering Machine Learning
Dr. Jorge Fonseca Cacho

Dr. Jorge Fonseca Cacho

Assistant Professor ยท Computer Science

Dr. Fonseca specializes in NLP, health data pipelines, and AI systems design. He leads the group's work in applying transformer models and machine learning to real-world nursing and healthcare datasets.

NLP AI Systems Health Data

Growing Platform, Bigger Impact

We're actively publishing, building new tools, and expanding our research portfolio. Stay tuned as we add new datasets, collaborators, and open-source tools.

Get in Touch jorge-fonseca.com