April 22, 2021 - The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai recently announced that it will offer a new PhD concentration that could boost the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.

The concentration centers on AI and emerging technologies (AIET) to advance innovative technologies for various clinical applications.

For example, the AIET concentration, which is part of Mount Sinai’s PhD in Biomedical Sciences program, will boost efforts to develop and implement new tools for faster, less expensive, and more effective drug discovery. 

Specifically, researchers will leverage patient-driven biology and various biological and simulation data to provide physicians with the tools to provide better diagnosis and care for their patients. 

Data will be collected across departments and institutes within the Mount Sinai Health System.

“Artificial intelligence and several other powerful technologies such as medical devices, robotic machines, and sensors are paving the way for a new era of biomedical research, offering unparalleled opportunities to improve human health,” Marta Filizola, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Nathan G. Kase, MD, professor of pharmacological sciences at Icahn Mount Sinai, said in the announcement. 

“This new training area, along with other similar initiatives, is placing Mount Sinai at the leading edge of this emerging scientific field to enhance health and well-being of people everywhere,” Filizola and Kase continued. 

This initiative will work simultaneously with the Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, led by Zahi A. Fayad, PhD.

The Institute will leverage Mount Sinai’s imaging and nanomedicine programs to develop novel medical inventions in imaging, nanomedicine, artificial intelligence, and computer vision technologies.

Additionally, the Institute will tap existing relationships with various higher education institutions outside Mount Sinai to offer expertise and boost collaborative research and opportunities for trainees and faculty. 

Currently, the answer to fundamental questions in medicine and biology are buried inside data collections that are too large to be stored, curated, analyzed, and visualized by traditional approaches, the announcement stated. 

And the transformative impact of AI and emerging technologies in medicine is just beginning.  

“We are now on the frontier of more accurately identifying the indicators of disease and opening up new vistas for treatment of illness in real-time,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and president for academic affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System.

Thomas J. Fuchs, DSc, dean of artificial intelligence of human health at Mount Sinai stated that future biomedical researchers will need to be equipped with the necessary skill sets to tackle the growing complexity in medicine. 

“Not only will this new generation of professionals need to receive foundational education in the use of information systems, but they will need to learn how to develop and interpret predictive diagnostic and therapeutic models using a variety of machine learning tools based on statistics and probability theory, drawing upon quantitative fields,” Fuchs said. 

Some of these quantitative fields include computer science, mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical or computational chemistry, and digital engineering.