Ritu Agarwal is the William Polk Carey Distinguished Professor of Information Systems and Health at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

She is also the founding co-director of the Center for Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence (CDHAI). Dr. Agarwal is an expert in the strategic use of information technology, digital transformation of healthcare, health analytics, and artificial intelligence applications in health.  

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A scholar working at the intersection of social science, data science and technology, Dr. Agarwal’s research seeks to apply advanced digital technologies to healthcare practice and delivery, and to unravel the underlying behavioral, psychological, and social processes that enable and constrain successful healthcare interventions. She has been a pioneer in research related to digital technologies and health among scholars in leading business schools, and has devoted her research efforts towards improving healthcare quality, promoting equity and access, and reducing costs. She has published extensively in top business and healthcare journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and Health Affairs. Her research has garnered over 50,000 citations.

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Dr. Agarwal has testified before the National Committee on Health and Vital Statistics and the US Department of Health on her research related to digital technologies and health. She was an appointed member of the Federal Advisory Council for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the NIH and has served on the NIH Working Group for Integration of Behavioral and Social Science Research. Her research has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Institute of Healthcare Management, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, US Department of Labor, US Department of Justice, NSF, and a number of private corporations. She is currently an MPI of the NIH funded AIM-AHEAD initiative that aims to drive greater equity in AI and ML solutions. In 2010 Professor Agarwal launched the Annual Conference on Health Information Technology and Analytics (CHITA). This conference, now in its 14th year, is a leading research forum at the intersection of technology, analytics, and health and is supported by AHRQ. Through CHITA, Professor Agarwal has facilitated the development of a vibrant multidisciplinary community, attracting researchers, practitioners, and policy makers across diverse fields including business, economics, public health and medicine. 

Professor Agarwal has received numerous recognitions for her research and scholarly contributions. In 2011 she became a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems, and in 2017 she was appointed as Distinguished University Professor; the highest academic title at the University of Maryland. In 2019 she received the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Information Systems. In 2021 she was awarded the President’s Medal at the University of Maryland, the highest honor given to a member of the University community. In 2021 she was elected Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for outstanding lifetime achievement and exceptional accomplishments in operations research and the management sciences.