Research Summary

Dr. Hong is Associate Professor and Medical Director of Radiation Oncology Informatics in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Clinical Informatics and Digital Transformation (DoC-IT), and Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, and in the UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health. Clinically, he specializes in the treatment of genitourinary malignancies.

Dr. Hong is a physician-scientist whose NIH-funded computational research lab focuses on the development and implementation of computational tools in the clinic to provide personalized, precision cancer care for patients. His group combines clinical domain knowledge with data science expertise to generate insights from real world data, develop actionable artificial intelligence-based tools, and implement and evaluate the benefit of these advances in patient care. He led one of the first randomized controlled studies of healthcare machine learning, developing an electronic health record-based algorithm that accurately directed care to reduce emergency visits and hospitalizations during radiotherapy.

Dr. Hong received his B.S. in Biomedical Computation and M.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford University. He completed his M.D. at the University of Wisconsin and residency in radiation oncology at Duke University, where he served as Chief Resident. Dr. Hong is board certified in both radiation oncology and clinical informatics.

On a national level, Dr. Hong serves on the NRG Oncology Cancer Care Delivery Research Committee, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Cancer Communications Committee and AI Community of Practice Steering Committee, American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Scientific Review Panel, Radiation Oncology Institute Research Committee, and American Medical Informatics Association Scientific Program Committee. His work has been funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation, ASTRO, Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Hong’s research has been published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals across both medicine and computational sciences, such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, JAMA Oncology, the New England Journal of Medicine AI, Lancet Digital Health, and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). His work has been recognized with the Radiation Oncology Institute (ROI) Publication Award, Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Award, and the Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Learning Health Systems New England Journal of Medicine Travel Award. He finished third in a pool of 934 teams in the 2018 Google Cloud Kaggle NCAA March Madness Learning Competition.

Research Funding

  • March 1, 2023 - February 29, 2028 - Multi-institutional validation of a multi-modal machine learning algorithm to predict and reduce acute care during cancer therapy , . Sponsor: NIH/NCI, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA277782
  • March 1, 2023 - March 25, 2027 - Diagnostic tools for quality improvement of machine learning-based clinical decision support systems , . Sponsor: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Sponsor Award ID: Improving Methods for Conducting Patient-Centered
  • September 6, 2022 - September 5, 2024 - Advancing the Drug Development Process in Metastatic Prostate Cancer through Machine Learning , . Sponsor: Prostate Cancer Foundation, Sponsor Award ID: 22CHAS02
  • July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2024 - Accessible and equitable computational approaches to reduce acute care for cancer patients , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: Conquer Cancer, Sponsor Award ID: Career Development Grant
  • July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2024 - Artificial intelligence approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of oligometastatic prostate cancer , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: ASTRO-PCF, Sponsor Award ID: Career Development Award to End Prostate Cancer
  • September 1, 2021 - February 28, 2023 - Artificial intelligence approaches to reduce disparities in supportive care during cancer therapy , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: UCSF, Sponsor Award ID: Computational Cancer Award
  • July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2022 - Reducing preventable ED visits and hospitalizations in patients with cancer , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: UCSF, Sponsor Award ID: Precision Medicine Cancer Building Award
  • February 1, 2020 - January 31, 2021 - Enhanced prostate cancer diagnostics: Intelligent algorithms to improve patient , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: American Cancer Society, Sponsor Award ID: IRG-17-180-19

Education

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, BS, 06/2008, Biomedical Computation
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, MS, 06/2009, Bioengineering
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, MD, 05/2014, Medicine
Yale-New Haven Medical Center, New Haven/Waterbury, CT, Internship, 06/2015, Internal Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, Residency, 06/2019, Radiation Oncology

Honors & Awards

  • 2021
    Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Innovative Practices Award, Cambridge Healthtech Institute
  • 2021
    Publication Award, Radiation Oncology Institute
  • 2021
    Annual Symposium Distinguished Poster, American Medical Informatics Association
  • 2020
    New England Journal of Medicine Travel Scholarship, Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Learning Health Systems
  • 2018
    3rd Place, Google Kaggle NCAA March Madness Machine Learning Competition
  • 2014
    Dylan Cappel Memorial Scholarship in Oncology, University of Wisconsin
  • 2012
    Herman and Gwendolyn Shapiro Excellence in Student Research Award, University of Wisconsin
  • 2011
    Excellence in Radiology Research Award, National Student Research Forum
  • 2009
    Excellence in Science Award, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Selected Publications

  1. Chen WS, Tuchayi AM, Sabbagh A, Kim I, Porter E, Ashraf-Ganjouei A, Li YR, Witztum A, Rajagopal A, Seyedin SN, Juarez R, Carroll PR, Feng FY, Small EJ, Hope TA, Hong JC Utility of metastasis-directed radiotherapy with and without hormonal therapy in management of oligometastatic prostate cancer.  View on PubMed
  2. Chang JH, Ashraf-Ganjouei A, Friesner I, Benson R, Zack T, Sinha S, Chan J, Braunstein S, Lin A, Singer L, Hong JC Unsupervised Large Language Models to Identify Topics in Cancer Center Patient Portal Messages.  View on PubMed
  3. Kouzy R, Hong JC, Bitterman DS One shot at trust: building credible evidence for medical artificial intelligence.  View on PubMed
  4. Poel R, Rüfenacht E, Scheib S, Hemmatazad H, Krcek R, Tran S, Romano E, Rogers S, Stieb S, Poolakundan MR, Al-Abdulla HH, Foerster R, Schröder C, Oehler C, Hong J, Breedveld S, Andratschke N, Manser P, Fix MK, Aebersold DM, Reyes M, Ermis E A comprehensive multifaceted technical evaluation framework for implementation of auto-segmentation models in radiotherapy.  View on PubMed
  5. Huang CC, Carpenter DJ, Leng J, Qazi J, Natarajan B, Arshad M, Moravan MJ, Vaios EJ, Reitman ZJ, Kirkpatrick JP, Floyd SR, Chmura SJ, Hong JC, Salama JK, Mullikin TC Clinical Parameters Associated With Intracranial Progression Burden Following an Initial Stereotactic Radiosurgery Course in a Multi-institutional Brain Metastases Cohort.  View on PubMed
  6. Qazi JJ, Carpenter DJ, Leng J, Huang CC, Chmura SJ, Arshad M, Reitman ZJ, Kirkpatrick JP, Hong JC, Floyd SR, Mullikin TC, Salama JK Multi-institutional Outcomes after Stereotactic Radiosurgery for Gastrointestinal Brain Metastases.  View on PubMed
  7. Benson R, Elia M, Hyams B, Chang JH, Hong JC. A Narrative Review on the Application of Large Language Models to Support Cancer Care and Research. Yearb Med Inform. 2024 Aug; 33(1):90-98.  View on PubMed
  8. Mandair D, Elia MV, Hong JC Considerations in Translating AI to Improve Care.  View on PubMed
  9. Chang C, Chen JJ, Feng J, Friesner I, Mohindra S, Boreta L, Rabow MW, Braunstein SE, Benson R, Hong JC. Patterns in Symptoms Preceding Acute Care in Patients With Cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Apr 01; 8(4):e256366.  View on PubMed
  10. Feng EM, Vo-Phamhi J, Subramanian AN, Dias M, Foye A, Vinson J, Hong JC, Freedland SJ, Alumkal JJ, Beltran H, Morrissey C, Nelson PS, Chinnaiyan AM, Aggarwal R, Small EJ, Quigley DA, Sjöström M, Zhao SG, Chen WS. Racial variation in the advanced prostate cancer genome. Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2025 Mar 31.  View on PubMed
  11. Garcia ME, Ochoa-Frongia L, Neuhaus J, Hong JC, Hinton L, Livaudais-Toman J, Feldman MD, Mangurian C, Appelle N, Karliner LS. Depression Treatment After a Positive Depression Screen Result. JAMA Intern Med. 2025 Feb 01; 185(2):221-229.  View on PubMed
  12. Spiegel DY, Friesner ID, Zhang W, Zack T, Yan G, Willcox J, Prionas N, Singer L, Park C, Hong JC. Exploring the Social Media Discussion of Breast Cancer Treatment Choices: Quantitative Natural Language Processing Study. JMIR Cancer. 2025 Jan 28; 11:e52886.  View on PubMed
  13. Chen LC, Zack T, Demirci A, Sushil M, Miao B, Kasap C, Butte A, Collisson EA, Hong JC. Assessing Large Language Models for Oncology Data Inference From Radiology Reports. JCO Clin Cancer Inform. 2024 Dec; 8:e2400126.  View on PubMed
  14. Feng J, Friesner I, Hong JC. Unplanned Hospitalization Prediction During Chemoradiotherapy Via Machine Learning Classifiers-Reply. JAMA Oncol. 2024 Oct 01; 10(10):1442-1443.  View on PubMed
  15. Mohamad O, Li YR, Feng F, Hong JC, Wong A, El Kouzi Z, Shelan M, Zilli T, Carroll P, Roach M. Delayed definitive management of localized prostate cancer: what do we know? Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2024 Aug 11.  View on PubMed
  16. Hong JC. AI Use in Prostate Cancer: Potential Improvements in Treatments and Patient Care. Oncology (Williston Park). 2024 05 13; 38(5):208-209.  View on PubMed
  17. Friesner ID, Feng J, Kalnicki S, Garg M, Ohri N, Hong JC. Machine Learning-Based Prediction of Hospitalization During Chemoradiotherapy With Daily Step Counts. JAMA Oncol. 2024 May 01; 10(5):642-647.  View on PubMed
  18. Natesan D, Eisenstein EL, Thomas SM, Eclov NCW, Dalal NH, Stephens SJ, Malicki M, Shields S, Cobb A, Mowery YM, Niedzwiecki D, Tenenbaum JD, Palta M, Hong JC. Health Care Cost Reductions with Machine Learning-Directed Evaluations during Radiation Therapy - An Economic Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Study. NEJM AI. 2024 Apr; 1(4).  View on PubMed
  19. Leng JX, Carpenter DJ, Huang C, Qazi J, Arshad M, Mullikin TC, Reitman ZJ, Kirkpatrick JP, Floyd SR, Fecci PE, Chmura SJ, Hong JC, Salama JK. Determinants of Symptomatic Intracranial Progression After an Initial Stereotactic Radiosurgery Course. Adv Radiat Oncol. 2024 Jun; 9(6):101475.  View on PubMed
  20. Lin H, Ni L, Phuong C, Hong JC. Natural Language Processing for Radiation Oncology: Personalizing Treatment Pathways. Pharmgenomics Pers Med. 2024; 17:65-76.  View on PubMed

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