The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has launched a new department dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to transform health care, further positioning the Mount Sinai Health System as a leader in providing patient care through pioneering innovations and technologies. The Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health is the first department of its kind within a medical school in the United States.
The department’s mission is to lead the artificial intelligence-driven transformation of health care through innovative research, apply that knowledge to treatment in hospital and clinical settings, and provide personalized care for each patient, which will expand Mount Sinai’s impact on human health across the Health System and around the world.
“Mount Sinai’s AI enterprise and its collective entities will be the connective fabric linking and integrating our work throughout the entire Health System, as we robustly collaborate with all our institutes, departments, and centers to provide phenomenal patient care,” said Thomas J. Fuchs, Dr.sc, Dean for Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, and Professor of Computational Pathology and Computer Science in the Department of Pathology at Icahn Mount Sinai. “The overarching goal of the Department for AI and Human Health is to impact patients’ health with AI. We will accomplish this by building AI systems at scale from data representing Mount Sinai’s diverse patient population. These systems will work seamlessly across all hospitals and care units to support physicians, foster research, and most importantly help patients’ care and well-being.”
Dr. Fuchs, who will lead the Department, is a prominent scientist in the groundbreaking field of computational pathology, with decades of experience in machine learning and artificial intelligence in health care. Together with his team, he will guide the department in creating an “AI Fabric” that will integrate machine learning and AI-driven decision-making throughout the Health System’s eight hospitals. This effort will include creating a hub-and-satellite model to make new tools and techniques available to all Mount Sinai physicians, and building an infrastructure for high-performance computing and data access to improve Mount Sinai’s diagnostic and treatment capabilities.
“Mount Sinai has been on the forefront of the artificial intelligence revolution,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of Icahn Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System. “We’ve made bold steps in recruiting the brightest minds, invested in leading-edge technology, and created an infrastructure where discoveries are quickly translated to benefit patients and change practice. This Department cements our commitment to further developing this field, charting new avenues, and making this bold future a reality.”
As part of Mount Sinai’s ongoing commitment to expand AI, the department will be located on four floors in a completely redesigned and renovated space at 3 East 101st Street that includes areas for computational work and advanced imaging modalities such as virtual and augmented reality. The Department of AI and Human Health is also launching a campaign to recruit talented researchers, scientists, physicians, and students in the field.
“We are just at the beginning stages of reaping the advantages of artificial intelligence and machine learning in biomedical research and clinical medicine,” said Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, and Director of The Friedman Brain Institute at Mount Sinai. “Mount Sinai is at the forefront of this effort, underscored by the opening—expected toward the end of 2022—of a new research facility on campus that will house the new Department and related endeavors.”
The new department continues to build on Mount Sinai’s expertise and early adaptation of various forms of artificial intelligence, including machine learning to develop novel diagnostics and treatments for diseases. Earlier this year, Icahn Mount Sinai announced it will offer a new PhD concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Medicine as part of its PhD in Biomedical Sciences program starting in the fall of 2022. The concentration will train future scientists in cutting-edge technologies, including AI, medical devices, robotic machines, and sensors. The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai—a collaboration between the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, and the Mount Sinai Health System—formed in 2019 to expand capabilities and create new tools of data science, biomedical and digital engineering, machine learning, and AI, including wearable technology.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City’s largest academic medical system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai advances medicine and health through unrivaled education and translational research and discovery to deliver care that is the safest, highest-quality, most accessible and equitable, and the best value of any health system in the nation.
