William Crown Ph.D.

Dr. Crown is a Distinguished Research Scientist in the Heller School. He is an internationally recognized expert in real world data analysis, focusing upon research designs and statistical methods for drawing causal inferences from transactional health care datasets such as medical claims and electronic health records. Bill began his career at the Heller School in the early 1980s focusing on the demography and health economics of aging, and taught a series of statistics courses in the Heller PhD program. He left Brandeis in the mid-1990s to lead health economics consultancies at Truven and Optum. From 2013-2020, he was Chief Scientific Officer at OptumLabs where he provided methodological guidance on a portfolio of research projects with specific focus on causal inference in database studies, simulation of health care systems, and application of operations research methods to health policy questions. He received his doctorate degree in regional economic modeling from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a master of arts in economics from Boston University. He has an extensive record of empirical comparative effectiveness studies and methodological publications in clinical and health policy journals. Dr. Crown was 2013-14 President of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). He currently co-chairs the ISPOR Task Force on Machine Learning and is particularly interested in the intersection of machine learning and causal inference methods, as well as transparency in the conduct and reporting of empirical health care research.