Northeastern Professor Receives Fulbright to Develop AI Remote Patient Monitoring System
Anand Nair, a professor of supply chain and information management at Northeastern University, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to spend the fall semester at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He will work with Kingston General Hospital and Queen's Smith School of Business to develop and test an AI system designed to identify patients at risk of readmission after hospital discharge.
The project addresses a practical problem in post-discharge care. Hospitals currently struggle to monitor patients once they leave, making it difficult to catch complications before they require another admission. Nair's system will use AI to analyze patient data and flag high-risk cases early.
Why This Matters for Healthcare Organizations
Remote patient monitoring has moved from a niche practice to mainstream healthcare, accelerated by COVID-19 adoption of digital health tools. Hospitals and health systems now routinely use connected devices and digital platforms to track patients outside traditional settings.
AI enables these systems to process large volumes of data quickly-something clinicians cannot do manually. The technology identifies patterns and predicts complications, supporting what Nair calls "precision medicine": care tailored to individual patient needs rather than one-size-fits-all protocols.
For healthcare providers, this means better risk stratification, fewer preventable readmissions, and potentially lower costs. The system could help clinical teams make faster, more informed decisions about which patients need immediate intervention.
About the Research
Nair brings 25 years of academic experience and decades of private sector work in supply chain management and data systems. His research focuses on how organizations adapt when managing complex processes, technologies, and resources.
He joined Northeastern in 2023 from Michigan State University and holds fellowships at the Center for Emerging Markets and the Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research. This is his second Fulbright appointment; he previously served as a distinguished chair at Aalto University in Finland in 2017.
The team plans to publish academic papers describing the system's design and findings. If successful in testing at Kingston General Hospital, the approach could be adopted by other hospitals.
Nair will return to Northeastern's Boston campus in spring 2027 to resume teaching.
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