The newly formed Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai will be co-led by Joel Dudley, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of Mount Sinai’s Institute for Next Generation Healthcare, and Erwin P. Bottinger, MD, Professor of Digital Health-Personalized Medicine at the Hasso Plattner Institute and Universität Potsdam, Germany, and Head of HPI’s Digital Health Center. A $15 million gift from the Hasso Plattner Foundation will establish the new Institute.
“This endeavor will usher in a new era of digital health at Mount Sinai that advances the field of precision medicine,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “By leveraging our shared knowledge and academic excellence, Mount Sinai and HPI are positioned to find solutions that will revolutionize healthcare and science, and improve health nationally and globally.”
“This collaboration brings together two internationally renowned institutions, whose education and research programs complement each other,” said Christoph Meinel, CEO of the Hasso Plattner Institute gGmbH, and Dean of the joint Digital Engineering Faculty of Hasso Plattner Institute and Universität Potsdam . “It also lays the groundwork for new joint research projects in the area of digital health and medicine.”
With world-class expertise and complementary resources in health care, data sciences and biomedical and digital engineeting, the new Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai will conduct patient-engaged and data driven research. The longer-term goals of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai include:
- establishing an organizational framework in which researchers at HPI and Mount Sinai collaborate and co-innovate seamlessly across health care and digital engineering
- extending funding opportunities for researchers in the United States and abroad
- researching and testing prototype digital health solutions for consumers, patients, providers, and health systems in the United States, Europe, and beyond.
Both institutions have undertaken significant investments to create infrastructure and resources needed for the new Institute. Mount Sinai’s interdisciplinary expertise in genomics, big data, supercomputing, and bioinformatics; large and diverse patient population; and an ability to translate from the lab directly to the clinic, provides a foundation for the Institute. The Institute for Next Generation Healthcare (INGH), under the leadership of Dr. Dudley, has developed an integrated translational biomedical research model using advances in omics, clinical medicine, digital health, and artificial intelligence; INGH’s Lab 100 is leveraging data and technology to redesign the way health is measured and healthcare is delivered and empowering patients to track their health overtime; and the BioMe™ BioBank Program housed at the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is enabling researchers to rapidly and efficiently conduct genetic, epidemiologic, molecular, and genomic studies on large collections of research specimens linked with electronic health records. The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai joins over 20 institutes launched at Icahn School of Medicine.
“Investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Hasso Plattner Institute have been publishing ground-breaking work in the areas of genome diagnostics, precision medicine, digital health, biomedical data science, artificial intelligence and information technology,” said Dr. Dudley, Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute at Mount Sinai. “The new Digital Health Institute will serve as an opportunity to leverage our combined expertise in these areas at scale in one of the largest and most socially and economically diverse health systems in the country. We believe the HPIMS will serve to turn the promise of digital health into reality at the front lines of next-generation healthcare.”
“We know we can save lives, prevent disease, and improve the health of patients with artificial intelligence in real-time analysis of comprehensive health data from electronic health records, genetic information, and mobile sensor technologies,” said Dr. Bottinger, Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai. “With this groundbreaking new Institute, Mount Sinai and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, will join forces to build these cutting-edge digital health services.”
At the Hasso Plattner Institute, recently established programs like the HPI Digital Health Center (DHC) are bringing together individuals from health sciences, human sciences, data sciences, digital engineering, and society with a shared goal to improve health and wellbeing. The Center’s three divisions – Connected Health, Machine Learning in Human Health and Personalized Medicine which is directed by Bottinger – are pursuing novel methods in artificial intelligence, sensor technologies and mobile computing platforms to collect and analyze patient-generated health data. Other areas of focus include human-centered design for digital health and security and knowledge engineering.
Additionl collaborations with HPS Gesundheitscloud (HPS GC) gGmbH, a not-for-profit corporation funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation, and Smart4Health, a European Union-funded research consortium, will further strengthen the Institution’s goals to develop digital solutions that transform healthcare and improve health of patients around the globe.
