Mount Sinai Health System has opened the Hamilton and Amabel James Center for Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at its Icahn School of Medicine to foster collaboration across multiple programs dedicated to enhancing healthcare delivery through the research, development and application of artificial intelligence tools and technologies. 

WHY IT MATTERS

By placing these programs under one roof and better integrating research and data, Mount Sinai aims to propel AI-fueled medical discoveries. The new center will cultivate an optimal environment for researchers to deepen their understanding, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, health system and medical school leaders said Monday.

Mount Sinai, one of New York City’s largest academic medical systems, said that the new 65,000-square-foot AI research facility will be located in eight of 12 floors of a repurposed building centrally located within its Manhattan campus.

The Hamilton and Amabel James Center for AI and Human Health will house about 40 principal investigators and 250 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, computer scientists and support staff, including the Windreich Department of AI and Human Health, the health system said.

While the medical school has led AI research and development in U.S. healthcare, it is one of the first to establish a dedicated AI research center, according to Dr. Eric Nestler, MD, director of the Friedman Brain Institute, dean for academic and scientific affairs at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the chief scientific officer at Mount Sinai Health System.

"By integrating AI technology across genomics, imaging, pathology, electronic health records and beyond, Mount Sinai is revolutionizing doctors’ capacity to diagnose and treat patients, reshaping the future of healthcare," he said in a statement.

"If we want to use artificial intelligence for the greater good and make significant progress in healthcare, investing in AI research and development within academic institutions is essential," added Dr. Dennis S. Charney, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean at Icahn Mount Sinai and the health system's president for academic affairs.

The school's AI and health department has several ongoing collaborations, partnerships and institutions across the health system, including one creating an AI Fabric for integrating machine learning and AI-driven decision-making throughout the health system’s eight hospitals, Mount Sinai said.

The new Center for AI and Human Health will also host the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, Institute for Genomic Health and Division of Medical Genetics, Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute and the Institute for Personalized Medicine. 

THE LARGER TREND

Mount Sinai has studied several ways that AI might tackle healthcare delivery modalities, from analyzing surgery videos to streamlining hospital administrative tasks.

In April, Mount Sinai researchers evaluated the potential application for large language models to automate medical coding, comparing LLMs from OpenAI, Google and Meta. After assessing whether they could effectively match the right medical codes to their corresponding official text descriptions, the researchers found them inappropriate for medical coding work.

While the health system passes on implementing some uses of AI models, Dr. Bruce Darrow, the health system's chief medical information officer and former interim chief digital information officer, told Healthcare IT News in June that all of Mount Sinai's applications will soon incorporate AI.

"Just about every piece of software that we use at Mount Sinai if it doesn't already have AI built into it, I can expect it to have AI built into it over the course of the next three to five years, it's just the way that technology is going," he said.

Then in September, Mount Sinai named Lisa S. Stump to the CDIO post and dean for information technology at its medical school to bridge its clinical, educational and research missions.

The health system said her first task would be the planning and development of a comprehensive enterprise digital ecosystem that will improve collaboration between providers and researchers and work to integrate new technologies, like AI.

ON THE RECORD

"As AI technology is evolving rapidly, this moment is critical for maintaining leadership in digital health," Nestler said in a statement about the new AI center. 

"While large tech companies possess substantial funding and resources to access high-performance equipment, they lack access to a health care system, limiting their progress in the field," added Charney.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.