One medical school is upping the ante on future-generation healthcare science training by launching a department dedicated to just that. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is debuting its own Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, which is meant to foster collaboration opportunities among medical and computer scientists while promoting the adoption of an AI framework for health systems.
In creating this pioneering department, the school is hoping to drive use of AI-powered health solutions and normalize the technology's integration in medical education institutions. Thomas J. Fuchs, the Icahn School of Medicine's dean of artificial intelligence and human health, said, "While we must continue to vigorously oppose dystopian misuse of artificial intelligence for surveillance and propaganda, it is clear that within the healthcare arena, patients are dying not because of AI but because we are not using it."
Mount Sinai officials have said that this new department's directive covers two essential areas. The first is AI health technology education, which will be facilitated through AI-centered courses, seminars, and year-long, protected fellowships for medical students. Second, department leaders will work toward establishing an "intelligent fabric" of AI empowerments interlaced throughout its biomedicine and healthcare efforts. An achievement of this framework would enable more-informed decision making at hospital scale, improve productivity at local scale, and better personalize services for individual patients.
