The Mount Sinai Health System has opened the doors of its new AI research center in Manhattan, the Hamilton and Amabel James Center for AI and Human Health.
The 12-floor research facility has been in the works for three years, since the health system launched its Windreich Department of AI and Human Health, which seeks to harness AI to care for patients in the Mount Sinai Health System's eight hospitals and 400 ambulatory clinics. It's also creating an "intelligent fabric" to undergird the health system's operations.
The Hamilton and Amabel James Center for AI will host eight AI-related departments of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, including the Hasso Plattner Institute of Digital Health at Mount Sinai, the Institute for Genomic Health, the Division of Medical Genetics and Genomics, the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute and the Institute for Personalized Medicine.
The building was funded by Hamilton Evans "Tony" James, executive vice chairman of the Manhattan-based investment firm Blackstone, and his wife, Amabel. The new center was a $100 million project, a Mount Sinai spokesperson confirmed.
The new building will initially house 40 principal investigators and 250 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, computer scientists and support staff, a press release by the organization said.
Mount Sinai has been building its institutional AI development capabilities for the last several years, led by Thomas Fuchs, who recently departed from the health system to become the chief AI officer at Eli Lilly.
Mount Sinai is pitting itself against Big Tech for AI innovation and banking on its swarm of medical data. The health system seems keen to develop algorithms for internal use to improve clinical operations.
The system has created many proprietary AI systems, including for hospital admission and identification of patients with malnutrition, NutriScan AI, for which it won a Hearst Health Award in 2024.
So-called homegrown AI is not regulated by the federal government.
Mount Sinai is a founding partner of the Coalition for Health AI, which is spearheading a public-private effort to build consensus on AI standards and to validate AI tools.