Mount Sinai Creates First AI Department Within U.S. Medical School
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City has launched a new department dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence (AI). Mount Sinai said 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 AI-driven transformation of healthcare through research, apply that knowledge to treatment in hospital and clinical settings, and provide personalized care for each patient.
“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, in a statement. Fuchs is 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,” Fuchs added. “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.”
Earlier this year, Icahn Mount Sinai announced it will offer a new Ph.D. concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Medicine as part of its Ph.D. 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.
With his team, Fuchs 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.
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, Mount Sinai said. The Department of AI and Human Health is also launching a campaign to recruit researchers, scientists, physicians, and students in the field.
