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Joining Forces to Create a New Digital Health Institute

Updated on Nov 19, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence, Featured, Research

From left: 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; and Christoph Meinel, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Hasso Plattner Institute, and Dean, Joint Digital Engineering Faculty, Hasso Plattner Institute and University of Potsdam.

The Mount Sinai Health System and the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), a leading data science research and educational institution in Germany, have formed an affiliation that will combine their expertise in health care delivery, biomedical and digital engineering, and artificial intelligence. The aim is to develop digital health tools with real-time predictive and preventive capabilities that empower patients and health care providers and improve health outcomes.

Erwin P. Bottinger, MD, left, and Joel Dudley, PhD, are co-directors of the new Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai.

The newly formed Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai will be led by Joel Dudley, PhD, Executive Vice President for Precision Health, Mount Sinai Health System, Mount Sinai Professor in Biomedical Data Science, and Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Erwin P. Bottinger, MD, Professor of Digital Health-Personalized Medicine, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany, and Head of HPI’s Digital Health Center. A $15 million gift from the Hasso Plattner Foundation will establish the new Institute, which was announced in March at the Icahn School of Medicine.

“This endeavor will usher in a new era of digital health at Mount Sinai that advances the field of precision medicine,” says 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 health care and science, and improve health nationally and globally.”

The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai joins more than 20 institutes launched at the Icahn School of Medicine. Its goals include building a digital health population of engaged participants to collect comprehensive and longitudinal health data from wearable devices, genetic sequencing, and electronic health records; creating a cloud-based health data platform for research and care using machine learning and artificial intelligence; and researching and testing prototype digital health solutions for patients, providers, and health systems. Mount Sinai’s expertise in genomics, big data, supercomputing, and bioinformatics—along with a large and diverse patient population and an ability to translate from the lab directly to the clinic—provides a foundation for the Institute.

For example, the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare (INGH), under the leadership of Dr. Dudley, has developed a translational biomedical research model using advances in clinical medicine, digital health, and artificial intelligence, and INGH’s Lab 100 is leveraging data and technology to redesign the way health is measured and health care is delivered. In another innovative effort, the BioMe™ BioBank Program, housed at The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai, is enabling researchers to conduct genetic, epidemiologic, molecular, and genomic studies on large collections of research specimens linked with electronic health records. Until 2015, Dr. Bottinger was Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), and Pharmacological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, and he helped lay the groundwork for the BioBank Program and The Institute for Personalized Medicine.

“Investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Hasso Plattner Institute have been publishing groundbreaking work in the areas of genome diagnostics, precision medicine, digital health, biomedical data science, artificial intelligence, and information technology,” says Dr. Dudley. “We believe the new Institute will help turn the promise of digital health into reality at the front lines of next generation health care.”

Dr. Bottinger says, “We know we can save lives, prevent disease, and improve the health of patients with artificial intelligence in real-time analysis of health data from electronic health records, genetic information, and mobile sensor technologies.”

Honoring Mount Sinai Volunteers at a Breakfast

May 13, 2019 | Community, Featured

From left: Claudia Colgan; Dennis S. Charney, MD; Peter W. May; Shari Kaplan; and Kenneth L. Davis, MD

Volunteers who serve The Mount Sinai Hospital and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai—helping staff in areas of patient care, research, and administration—were celebrated at a breakfast on Wednesday, April 10, during National Volunteer Recognition Week. The event was held in Annenberg West Lobby.

Peter W. May, now Chairman Emeritus of the Mount Sinai Boards of Trustees, and a steadfast supporter of the Department of Volunteer Services and this annual breakfast, reflected on the volunteer legacy that exists at Mount Sinai. “The history of our institution goes back to our founding by a small group of volunteers and the spirit to give back to the community,” he said. “Today, volunteerism at Mount Sinai continues to grow, and that strengthens us.”

Addressing the volunteers, Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, said, “Currently, we have more than 1,100 volunteers in more than 250 placement areas. What exactly have you done? Among many other activities, you have helped patients take more than 1,500 walks and engaged them in more than 1,600 active range of motion exercises. You helped nearly 1,000 patients get out of bed for many reasons, not just during mealtime. Your work is invaluable.”

CARE is a Mount Sinai volunteer program that helps promote mobility and physical activity in patients to improve patient outcomes. Click here to read more.

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, told the volunteers: “You’re optimistic, you’re welcoming, and you’re supportive. You are the foundation of the Mount Sinai community. You’re also role models for our students. This year, we also celebrate the first two volunteers who have been accepted to our School of Medicine.”

“Two words come to mind when describing the dedication of the Department of Volunteer Services and our volunteers—partnership and collaboration,” said Claudia Colgan, Vice President of Care Coordination for the Mount Sinai Health System and Vice President of Operations for The Mount Sinai Hospital. “We can always count on them to find new ways to make Mount Sinai a better place for staff and patients.”

Department of Volunteer Services Director Shari Kaplan, LCSW, told the volunteers: “You come after school, before work, and during your vacations and weekends. You come to learn, to share, and to help, and you come with your heart, and for that, and so much more, we celebrate you.”

Read about Creating a “Circle of CARE”

The Mount Sinai Hospital Welcomes New Facility Dog

May 13, 2019 | Community, Featured, Patient Stories

Emergency Department technician Suzi Steele, left, stopped to greet Moby and his handler, Jaclyn Damiano, in the lobby of the Icahn Medical Institute on East 98th Street.

The Mount Sinai Hospital recently welcomed Moby as its newest four-legged employee in the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department. The young, sweet-natured golden doodle now serves as the hospital’s third facility dog—along with Professor Bunsen Honeydew and Amos—offering attention and affection to faculty, staff, and patients.

“Animals create a therapeutic environment for patients, parents, and staff ,” says Diane Rode, MPS, Director of the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department. When one of the facility dogs is at a child’s bedside, she says, doctors and nurses often take a moment to sit down, too, and the atmosphere surrounding the patient becomes calmer and more harmonized.

Like Professor and Amos, Moby visits patients and their families. But his main emphasis is supporting faculty and staff, and helping clinical units de-stress during the course of a normally hectic week or during times of sadness. Ms. Rode says she has seen the dogs have a profound effect on grieving staff members.

To some degree, Moby’s schedule for the first year will be open-ended. But, accompanied by his handler, Jaclyn Damiano, MPS, a licensed Creative Arts Therapist, he does have structured time with certain units at The Mount Sinai Hospital and during visits to Mount Sinai Queens.

Ms. Rode credits the Mount Sinai Health System’s leadership for recognizing the value of facility dogs and says she is grateful for the support of David L. Reich, MD, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, and Jonathan Kyriacou, MPH, Vice President, Hospital Operations, who helped bring Moby to Mount Sinai.

Nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital Helps Save Man in Long Island Movie Theater

May 10, 2019 | Featured, Patient Stories

Shyvonne Allen-Ibitoye, right, a registered nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital, and DeShawn Mason, the man she helped to save

Shyvonne Allen-Ibitoye woke up Easter morning intent on going to church. But instead, the registered nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital took her son to a movie. As the movie was playing, she realized a man sitting a few rows back was having a heart attack and immediately began helping to revive him and get him to the hospital for treatment. “When I saw him awake in the hospital, it warmed my heart to know that he was ok,” she says.

Read the full story from South Nassau Communities Hospital

Electronic Lab Notebook for Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

May 9, 2019 | Featured, Research

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai now provides an Electronic Lab Notebook service for all researchers through an enterprise license agreement with LabArchives. The service is a secure, cloud-based software designed to replace paper notebooks and to help improve designing and documenting experiments.

“Mount Sinai is moving into the digital age of research record-keeping, and we really need folks to embrace it, to try it out,” says Reginald Miller, DVM, Dean, Research Operations and Infrastructure. “It’s a great way to collaborate with your colleagues, both internally and externally. It’s a resource that has unlimited user capability, and it’s free.”

At a time when science is being encouraged to be more reproducible and rigorous, this type of electronic note keeping is important in being able to show the data to those who request it and to be able to transmit and disseminate the data, according to Talia Swartz, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases.

“This has a huge advantage in providing a platform to make that readily available, and that is of interest to anyone who is trying to disseminate their data and collect it for the purpose of rigorous science,” says Dr. Swartz.

Get more information or sign up for the Electronic Lab Notebook

Neanderthal Teeth Yield Insights Into Past and Present

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Research

Manish Arora, PhD, MPH; and Christine Austin, PhD

Neanderthals became extinct more than 20,000 years ago, but an innovative study of teeth by an international team, including researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has uncovered details about their lives that may lead to new insights into human evolution and into chemical exposures that affect health outcomes now.

The study is the first to use teeth to explore in weekly increments the relationship between ancient climate change and the development of hominins—humans and their immediate ancestors. Researchers examined remains recovered from Payre, an archaeological site in the Rhone Valley of Southeastern France, analyzing one tooth each from two Neanderthal children who lived 250,000 years ago, and another tooth from a “modern” human child who lived 5,000 years ago.

“Much like trees, teeth have growth rings that enable us to look at what happened in the life of an individual on a weekly basis,” says co-author Christine Austin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine. “For these teeth, we cut a sample approximately 100 microns thick, or the width of a human hair, removed a small amount of material from the surface of the growth rings using a laser, analyzed the elements in that material using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and then constructed a timeline of exposure to the elements for each individual.”

Analyzing a slice of a Neanderthal child’s tooth, 100 microns thick, provided a timeline of development and chemical exposures. For example, a “stress line” around day 707 of the child’s life indicated a period of severe illness or hunger.

This technology was developed by Manish Arora, PhD, MPH, the Edith J. Baerwald Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine, and senior author of the study, which was published in Science Advances in October 2018. “Dr. Austin’s work is a game changer for the way we analyze archaeological samples and for our understanding of how environmental stressors have impacted the evolution of modern humans and how they continue to impact our health,” Dr. Arora says. “Her work on the evolution of breastfeeding has direct relevance to understanding the benefits of breast milk in modern medical practice.”

Dr. Austin and her colleagues at institutions in France and Australia noted developmental deformations in the Neanderthal teeth that reflected the stresses of life during harshly cold winters. In addition, both Neanderthals were exposed to lead at least twice during late winter or early spring. Dr. Austin says two mines are located within foraging distance of the recovery site, indicating that food and water from the area may have been contaminated with lead. There were also signs of high, acute exposure, which could have resulted from an event such as inhalation of a cave fire.

“Previously, we thought that lead exposure mainly happened post-industrialization,” Dr. Austin says. “Now we see that is not the case, and that raises questions about the impact of this neurotoxin on their neurodevelopment and ultimately their behavior. That is something we want to explore further.”

Equally of interest were the findings related to breastfeeding. One of the Neanderthals was weaned at about two and a half years of age, which is similar to the norm for early humans. “Compared to other primates, humans wean early, which enables higher reproductive rates and is likely one of the reasons for our species’ success,” Dr. Austin says. “Seeing a human-like weaning pattern in Neanderthals is very interesting and raises questions about when this nursing behavior evolved.”

Dr. Austin says the study could also lead to insights into chemical exposures from breast milk that could impact lifelong health. “There is a growing body of data on the importance of breast milk in the development of an infant’s microbiome,” she says. “By better understanding how the composition of breast milk has evolved, in addition to breastfeeding practices, we can start to propose interventions at critical developmental windows that mitigate exposure to environmental stresses and toxins and thus improve health outcomes.”

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