Chief Operating Officer, SchoolMe Assistant Research Professor, Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University Co-Founder, Head of Innovation & Impact, Head of Responsible AI — Avante
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Bio
Carly Eckert is a physician, epidemiologist, and clinical informaticist whose career sits at the intersection of healthcare AI, responsible technology development, and health system innovation. She trained as an MD, completed general surgery residency at Vanderbilt, and earned her MPH and PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Washington.
At VUMC, Carly is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Surgery, where she collaborates with clinical, operational, and technical stakeholders to design and evaluate digital and data-enabled solutions for care delivery, clinical workflows, and system performance. Her academic focus is translational informatics — bridging clinical need, data infrastructure, governance, and implementation science to make innovation effective and durable.
At Duke, she teaches undergraduate engineering students in the Pratt School of Engineering on product management, user-centered design, and ethical technology development.
Entrepreneurial & Industry Track Record
Carly has built, led, and scaled healthcare AI companies at every career stage:
- Co-Founder & Head of Innovation & Impact / Responsible AI, Avante (2023 – present) — Product strategy, data governance, and responsible deployment of AI in healthcare.
- Executive VP & General Manager, Olive AI (2021 – 2023)
- Director of Clinical Informatics, KenSci (2017 – 2021) — Acquired by Providence Health Systems.
- Associate Medical Director for Catastrophic Injuries, Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (2015 – 2017)
She has served as co-organizer of KDD Health Day, SIGKDD Data Science in Healthcare workshop, and the Symposium of AI for Good — convening venues that shaped the responsible-AI-in-healthcare conversation.
Recognition
- VentureBeat Women in AI Award — Responsibility & Ethics (2020)
- Seattle Health Innovators Award, finalist (2018)
- Alpha Omega Alpha (2008)
Research Contributions
Carly’s scholarly work has advanced three intersecting areas:
1. Health data governance & responsible AI. Practical governance frameworks for AI-enabled technologies in healthcare — addressing data provenance, bias, transparency, and accountability across the full lifecycle.
2. Translational informatics for health system innovation. Bridging clinical need, data infrastructure, and implementation in surgical and acute care settings.
3. Integrating product management into informatics education. Curriculum development that grounds engineers and informaticists in governance, equity, and real-world constraints.
Selected Publications
- Eckert CM. Adapting Trauma Outcome Prediction Models to Individual Facilities using Transfer Learning. University of Washington; 2023. (Doctoral dissertation)
- Ahmad MA, Eckert CM. Show Your Work: Responsible Model Reporting in Health Care Artificial Intelligence. Surgical Clinics of North America. 2023.
- Lammers DT, Eckert CM, Ahmad MA, Bingham JR, Eckert MJ. A surgeon’s guide to machine learning. Annals of Surgery Open. 2021.
- Ahmad MA, Eckert C, Allen C, Kumar V, Hu J, Teredesai A. Fairness in healthcare AI. IEEE ICHI, 2021.
- Ahmad MA, Teredesai A, Eckert C. Fairness, accountability, transparency in AI at scale: Lessons from national programs. FAccT, 2020.
- Ahmad MA, Patel A, Eckert C, Kumar V, Teredesai A. Fairness in machine learning for healthcare. KDD, 2020.
- Ahmad MA, Eckert C, Teredesai A. Interpretable machine learning in healthcare. ACM-BCB, 2018.
Editorial Leadership
- Co-Editor, Surgical Decision Making, Evidence, and Artificial Intelligence. Surgical Clinics of North America, 2023.
Academic Credentials
- PhD, Epidemiology — University of Washington, 2023
- Fellowship, Occupational & Preventive Medicine — University of Washington, 2015
- MPH, Epidemiology — University of Washington, 2014
- MD — University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 2009
- Residency, General Surgery — Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 2012
- BA, English — Duke University, 2004
Board Certification
- Clinical Informatics (2019 – present)
- Occupational & Environmental Medicine (2015 – present)
Role in the KEV.AI Lab
As Chief Operating Officer of SchoolMe and the lab’s senior voice on responsible AI, Carly leads governance, product strategy, and evaluation work that sits at the heart of the lab’s validation mission. Her career-long commitment to translating responsible AI from abstract principles into operational models is directly aligned with the lab’s core thesis: that medical AI must be rigorous, auditable, and trustworthy by design.