Amidst unprecedented technological and data-driven innovation in healthcare, the Rice Medical Humanities Research Institute will work to ensure that patients are seen as people in the context of healing. We will work to make healthcare more equitable and inclusive, so that marginalized communities receive the care they need, in a respectful and dignified form. We will achieve these aims by bringing humanists, artists, and social scientists together with engineers, natural scientists and clinicians to address major global challenges that cannot be solved by science or technology alone.

The Medical Humanities Research Institute will leverage the program’s existing networks to create multi-tiered translational research clusters that build on our research strengths in arts-based approaches to care, health data and technology justice, the construction and representation of patient narratives, and bioethics.