David Windreich

Thanks to the outstanding generosity of the Windreich Family Foundation, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will advance its vision of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning into research and clinical practice to amplify patient-centered care. This multi-million dollar gift will establish the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at Mount Sinai.

By establishing one of the first departments devoted to AI in a medical school, this gift represents Mount Sinai’s exceptional commitment to integrating AI throughout the Mount Sinai Health System. It will enable the recruitment of dedicated faculty, novel research initiatives, and the acquisition of any equipment and software that are mission critical to ensuring Mount Sinai continues to lead bold initiatives that embrace the power of technology to accelerate advances in both scientific research and clinical care.

Oversight of the newly named Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health will fall under the purview of its inaugural Chair, Thomas J. Fuchs, Dr.sc, who is also the Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai. The new department was formed under the vision and guidance of Dennis S. Charney, MD, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine. “This gift will ensure Mount Sinai continues to be at the forefront of the AI-driven revolution of health care to the benefit of Mount Sinai’s diverse patient population,” says Dr. Charney.

“Our duty at the new department at Mount Sinai is to ensure that our patients are the main beneficiaries of the enormous impact AI will have on health care,” says Dr. Fuchs.  “To realize this vision, we are tremendously grateful for the gift from the Windreich Family Foundation. Mr. Windreich’s forward looking support will allow us to build a unique AI infrastructure at Mount Sinai and attract the world’s leading talent in this space.”

David Windreich, who serves on the Boards of Trustees at Mount Sinai, has a history of supporting AI and big data solutions in health care. His philanthropy extends to naming the Windreich Center for Bioinformatics at Mount Sinai. This Center is singularly focused on developing cutting-edge, web-based software tools and databases to facilitate the collection and analysis of diverse and complex data from human cells and tissues that will inform precise treatments for patients based on their unique genetic makeup. Mr. Windreich is also a former member of the Board of Directors for Sema4, a platform that uses machine learning and AI tools to analyze a database of more than 10 million patient genomic profiles and clinical records. Sema4 spun out of Mount Sinai in 2017 and went public at a $3 billion valuation in 2021.

“We have not yet reached the tipping point of how AI can play a major role in health care,” says Mr. Windreich. “My family is excited to play a role in supporting Mount Sinai’s initiative of being at the forefront of delivering technology solutions that will ultimately improve care and save lives.”

Mount Sinai radiologists are comparing machine-read patient discharge summaries with original, human-read reports.

A patient’s electronic health record typically contains a trove of information that can be used to help predict and manage their future health needs. But much of that information is often composed of unstructured or fragmented data that first must be translated into language that physicians are able to understand.

A new partnership between the Mount Sinai Health System’s Department of Radiology and an Israel-based start-up, Maverick Medical AI, is exploring how to accomplish that task through the use of artificial intelligence. In a proof-of-concept study, Maverick’s deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms are being used to accurately identify co-morbidities in 1.5 million patient discharge summaries and radiology reports. If it is successful, Maverick’s program could open the door for its use in an array of medical, research, and business opportunities at Mount Sinai.

David Mendelson, MD

David Mendelson, MD, Vice Chair of Radiology Information Technology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is playing a key role in the research. He says one of Maverick’s strengths is its ability to report on secondary abnormalities in nearby organ systems that are sometimes only partially seen or could possibly be overlooked in radiological screenings.

“If someone is screened for lung cancer and the findings are negative, that’s great news for the patient,” says Dr. Mendelson. “But if natural language processing could identify secondary indications like coronary artery calcification or abnormal density of the liver, which might suggest non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, that information could prove very useful to physicians and patients. Physicians might be able to take preventive steps to improve outcomes for patients and ultimately lower health care costs downstream.”

Determining whether Maverick’s propriety algorithm can provide that important information is the responsibility of Pamela Argiriadi, MD, Assistant Professor of Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology at Mount Sinai. Dr. Argiriadi and a team of residents are spot-checking secondary co-morbidities extracted by the algorithm from an ocean of radiology reports and discharge summaries to determine how they compare to the original, human-read reports.

“Radiology reports contain a wealth of information and we hope our study will shed light on how key-word phrases in those documents can be mined to provide input into the well-being of patients,” Dr. Argiriadi says. “A major goal of ours is to improve communication with primary care providers by reporting secondary findings to them, which can result in follow-up treatment and preventive medicine.” The software can recognize these findings within the report, extract them, and flag them for the provider.

Yossi Shahak, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Maverick Medical AI, estimates that as much as 80 percent of a patient’s health information remains untapped due to its unstructured format. Translating that raw, fragmented data into medical coding language would provide physicians with actionable clinical insights.

“We are starting with radiology and hope to expand the vocabularies across many medical subspecialties, like cardiology and gastroenterology,” says Mr. Shahak. “That expansion of our data sets could provide Mount Sinai physicians with significant value when they mine it for often overlooked chronic conditions and risk factors. In addition, the conversion from unstructured data into medical coding will help Mount Sinai improve their financial capabilities.”

Girish Nadkarni, MD

With the influx of patient data resulting from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center is collaborating with London-based software company Clinithink to uncover key findings that can enable better treatment methods for COVID-19 patients.

Clinithink’s artificial intelligence platform, CLiX, processes large volumes of data from physician notes and documents within electronic health records, allowing providers to save time and effectively determine key information on patient conditions.

“We are currently using the platform to mine clinical documents in order to extract information to further our understanding of COVID-19 and its complexities, so we can determine the best course of action for individual patients,” said Girish Nadkarni, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine (Nephrology), Clinical Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health, and Co-Director of the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center.

Through the use of Clinithink’s platform “CLiX^TM unlock,” the COVID Informatics Center is creating risk scores for COVID-19 patient symptoms, sifting through data that has been stripped of any personal information to find patterns that can ultimately lead to new discoveries in COVID-19 treatment.

“Clinithink is enabling us to identify and distinguish the symptoms in hospitalized COVID-19 patients during admission, in order to determine if and when new symptoms are appearing during their hospitalization,” Dr. Nadkarni said.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai was the first academic institution in the nation to partner with Clinithink in 2016, its original use to accelerate the prescreening process to identify eligible candidates for clinical trials.

“The collaboration between Clinithink and Mount Sinai represents how novel research can be translated into clinical practice,” Chris Tackaberry, CEO of Clinithink, said. “We are delighted to see Mount Sinai extend the use of our platform as they continue to make breakthrough discoveries in COVID-19.”

The collaboration was facilitated by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the technology commercialization engine at Mount Sinai.

“Collaborating with Clinithink improves the way we understand and serve our patients,” said Erik Lium, PhD, President of MSIP and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Innovation Officer at the Mount Sinai Health System. “We look forward to seeing how Dr. Nadkarni’s team leverages Clinithink to extend our knowledge about COVID-19, and potentially improve treatment and patient outcomes.”