NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital has struck a partnership with two Cornell University institutions to develop artificial-intelligence tools for cardiovascular care, the system said Wednesday.
The program will bring together physicians and researchers from NewYork-Presbyterian, Cornell Tech and Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. NewYork-Presbyterian is providing $15 million in funding for the program over three years.
As part of the partnership, physicians from NewYork-Presbyterian’s affiliated medical schools—Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons—will work with AI researchers from Cornell Tech and Cornell Bowers CIS to study how AI can be used to improve cardiovascular health.
An initial area of research will involve developing tools to support physicians as they make treatment decisions for end-stage heart failure patients, the hospital system said. Later research will focus on predicting heart failure and heart disease so physicians can intervene earlier, before the disease progresses.
“Major algorithmic advances are needed to derive precise and reliable clinical insights from complex medical data,” said Deborah Estrin, associate dean for impact at Cornell Tech and a professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, in a news release.
The collaboration adds to a growing list of programs dedicated to developing AI solutions at healthcare organizations.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles set up an AI division within its department of medicine in March. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City launched a department of AI and human health late last year. And Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic in 2020 appointed a medical director for AI to coordinate initiatives across the system.
AI adoption is in the early stages at health systems, although most executives plan to increase their investments into the technology, according to a survey by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society last year.