James Ralston MD, MPH, is an internal medicine physician and senior investigator in health services and health informatics. His research mission is improving the health and care of patients living with common ongoing illnesses. His current areas of emphasis include understanding and honoring the priorities of patients living with multiple chronic conditions.
Dr. Ralston’s research focuses on developing and evaluating communication technologies that foster continuous care and a closer connection between patients and primary care teams. His commitment to finding effective ways to redesign care spans all stages of research, from project development to complete translation of results into clinical practice.
Examples of Dr. Ralston’s research projects include:
Dr. Ralston is also a University of Washington affiliate professor in health services and biomedical informatics, where he serves on the committees of PhD and master’s degree students.
eHealth; hypertension; diabetes
Health informatics; hypertension; diabetes; health behaviors; multiple chronic conditions
Self-management support
Health care disparities
Lyles CR, Sarkar U, Schillinger D, Ralston JD, Allen JY, Nguyen R5 Karter AJ. Refilling medications through an online patient portal: consistent improvements in adherence across racial/ethnic groups. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2015 Sep 2. pii: ocv126. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocv126. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Herr TM, Bielinski SJ, Bottinger E, Brautbar A, Brilliant M, Chute CG, Denny J, Freimuth RR, Hartzler A, Kannry J, Kohane IS, Kullo IJ, Lin S, Pathak J, Peissig P, Pulley J, Ralston J, Rasmussen L, Roden D, Tromp G, Williams MS, Starren J. A conceptual model for translating omic data into clinical action. J Pathol Inform. 2015 Aug 31;6:46. doi: 10.4103/2153-3539.163985. eCollection 2015. PubMed
Mosley JD, Shaffer CM, Van Driest SL, Weeke PE, Wells QS, Karnes JH, Velez Edwards DR, Wei WQ, Teixeira PL, Bastarache L, Crawford DC, Li R, Manolio TA, Bottinger EP, McCarty CA, Linneman JG, Brilliant MH, Pacheco JA, Thompson W, Chisholm RL, Jarvik GP, Crosslin DR, Carrell DS, Baldwin E, Ralston J, Larson EB, Grafton J, Scrol A, Jouni H, Kullo IJ, Tromp G, Borthwick KM, Kuivaniemi H, Carey DJ, Ritchie MD, Bradford Y, Verma SS, Chute CG, Veluchamy A, Siddiqui MK, Palmer CN, Doney A, MahmoudPour SH, Maitland-van der Zee AH, Morris AD, Denny JC, Roden DM. A genome-wide association study identifies variants in KCNIP4 associated with ACE inhibitor-induced cough. Pharmacogenomics J. 2015 Jul 14. doi: 10.1038/tpj.2015.51. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Crosslin DR, Robertson PD, Carrell DS, Gordon AS, Hanna DS, Burt A, Fullerton SM, Scrol A, Ralston J, Leppig K, Hartzler A, Baldwin E, Andrade Md, Kullo IJ, Tromp G, Doheny KF, Ritchie MD, Crane PK, Nickerson DA, Larson EB, Jarvik GP. Prospective participant selection and ranking to maximize actionable pharmacogenetic variants and discovery in the eMERGE Network. Genome Med. 2015 Jul 3;7(1):67. doi: 10.1186/s13073-015-0181-z. eCollection 2015. PubMed
Eschler J, Kendall L, O'Leary K, Vizer LM, Lozano P, McClure JB, Pratt W, Ralston JD. Shared calendars for home health management. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '15). 2015; ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1277-88. doi:10.1145/2675133.2675168. PubMed
Saberi P, Catz SL, Leyden WA, Stewart C, Ralston JD, Horberg MA, Grothaus L, Silverberg MJ. Antiretroviral therapy adherence and use of an electronic shared medical record among people living with HIV. AIDS Behav. 2015 Jan 9 [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Kendall L, Eschler J, Lozano P, McClure JB, Vizer LM, Ralston JD, Pratt W. Engineering for reliability in at-home chronic disease management. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2014 Nov 14;2014:777-86. eCollection 2014. PubMed
Overby CL, Rasmussen LV, Hartzler A, Connolly JJ, Person JF, Hedberg RE, Freimuth RR, Shirts BH, Denny JC, Larson EB, Chute CG, Jarvik GP, Ralston JD, Shuldiner AR, Starren J, Kullo IJ, Tarczy-Hornoch P, Williams MS. A template for authoring and adapting genomic medicine content in the eMERGE infobutton project. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2014 Nov;17;2014:944-53. eCollection 2014. PubMed
Grembowski D, Ralston JD, Anderson ML. Hemoglobin A1c, comorbid conditions and all-cause mortality in older patients with diabetes: a retrospective 9-year cohort study. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014 Nov;106(2):373-82. doi: 10.1016/j.diabres.2014.07.017. Epub 2014 Jul 29. PubMed
Rasmussen-Torvik LJ, Stallings SC, Gordon AS, Almoguera B, Basford MA, Bielinski SJ, Brautbar A, Brilliant M, Carrell DS, Connolly J, Crosslin DR, Doheny KF, Gallego CJ, Gottesman O, Kim DS, Leppig KA, Li R, Lin S, Manzi S, Mejia AR, Pacheco JA, Pan V, Pathak J, Perry CL, Peterson JF, Prows CA, Ralston J, Rasmussen LV, Ritchie MD, Sadhasivam S, Scott SA, Smith M, Vega A, Vinks AA, Volpi S, Wolf WA, Bottinger E, Chisholm RL, Chute CG, Haines JL, Harley JB, Keating B, Holm IA, Kullo IJ, Jarvik GP, Larson EB, Manolio T, McCarty CA, Nickerson DA, Scherer SE, Williams MS, Roden DM, Denny JC. Design and anticipated outcomes of the eMGERG-PGx project: a multi-center pilot for pre-emptive pharmacogenomics in electronic health record systems. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2014 Oct;96(4):482-9. doi: 10.1038/clpt.2014.137. Epub 2014 Jun 24. PubMed
Kaiser Permanente researchers develop predictive model to help adults with multiple health conditions.
Newly funded center will elevate equity and community in learning health system research.
Community circulation of ciprofloxacin-resistant E. coli increased after 6-year reduction in antibiotic prescriptions
A new study aims to understand trends in digital care communication among teens.
A new federal rule requiring physicians to give patients access to their notes may be easier to follow than physicians expected.