The New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System has announced the creation of the Mount Sinai Institute of Technology (MSIT), with the mission to transform biomedicine through the discovery, design, development, and delivery of technology-based solutions to critical unmet medical needs, particularly in the current era of healthcare reform.
The health system will create MSIT with $5 million in funding from the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The funding will be used to transform existing space on the campus of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai—the academic medical institution of the Mount Sinai Health System—into several facilities for MSIT. The new facility's anticipated completion date will be in the latter part of 2014, its officials say. New degree offerings related to MSIT commenced during the 2013-14 academic year.
MSIT will initially be organized around three primary technology categories:
• Digital health technologies including mobile health, wireless health, big data, cloud computing, social networking, scientific computing, and scientific and clinical simulation;
• Biologically integrated technologies including tissue engineering, sensors, microprocessors, robotics, mechatronics, MEMs, and microfluidics; and
• Prescription technologies including drug repurposing, drug delivery, nanomedicine, and medical devices.
Working in conjunction with the Troy, N.Y.-based Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MSIT will feature educational offerings, including the recently launched Ph.D. in Design, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. MSIT will also explore support for other degree programs, including the potential creation of a technology development track in the existing Master of Public Health degree program and a new Masters in Biomedical Informatics.
"Today marks another milestone in Mount Sinai's evolution from a stand-alone hospital founded more than 160 years ago to the world-class academic medical center it is today," said Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of the Mount Sinai Health System. "To our physicians, researchers and students, the word ‘innovation' is more than just a buzzword—it is a driving force in everything we do, from our classrooms and laboratories to our operating suites. The Mount Sinai Institute of Technology will serve as an incubator for innovation, helping to solve the medical problems facing our society."
