First Medical School to Deploy Private and Secure Tool to All Students
New York, NY, May 05, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In a national first for a medical school, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is providing all medical and graduate students, along with select faculty and staff members, access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu private and secure platform. The move reflects Mount Sinai’s commitment to pursuing innovative approaches to education and research through collaborative learning and scholarly inquiry.
The launch follows a formal agreement between Mount Sinai and OpenAI that safeguards personal health, student, and other sensitive information while delivering secure, accessible, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to the Icahn Mount Sinai scholarly community. Through this collaboration, the School enhances its educational toolkit to equip the next generation of physicians and scientists with a cutting-edge solution to succeed in the rapidly evolving health care and science ecosystem.
This latest development further enhances Mount Sinai’s research and learning environment, where students benefit from access to the vast, diverse data generated by a major New York City health system and its research enterprise. This access, combined with advanced technology, provides students with a powerful academic advantage and fosters innovative research opportunities.
“At Mount Sinai, we believe it’s our responsibility not just to adopt emerging technologies, but to do so with care, purpose, and a strong commitment to equity and academic integrity,” said David C. Thomas, MD, MHPE, Dean for Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “With robust safeguards in place—including full HIPAA compliance and integrated protections to support safe and appropriate use—our deployment of ChatGPT Edu gives our students the opportunity to engage critically with generative AI. It’s about helping them build the judgment, skills, and ethical grounding they’ll need to lead in a future where AI will increasingly intersect with medicine.”
Students are trained to use the platform as a complement to evidence-based practices, expert guidance, and patient-centered care—not as a replacement. ChatGPT Edu is being used across a variety of educational settings, from helping students strengthen clinical reasoning and understand complex cases to supporting research through data analysis and coding assistance. The platform does not provide medical care or make decisions, but serves as a dynamic learning aid, similar to a digital study partner, with built-in safeguards to ensure responsible and compliant use. Faculty members are also exploring its potential to enhance curriculum development, scholarly work, and innovation in teaching.
“Every student today, regardless of discipline, needs to know how to use AI effectively before entering an increasingly AI-powered workforce. In medical schools, teaching students how to use AI responsibly is even more critical. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is setting a powerful example, and we are delighted to work together to deploy ChatGPT Edu to all medical and graduate students,” said Leah Belsky, Vice President and General Manager of Education at OpenAI.
The initiative is guided by the Steering Committee on Teaching, Learning, and Discoveries at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is supported by the Research and Technologies Team. Core training opportunities on responsible and innovative use of AI are being led by the Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library team.
Examples of specific use cases include:
- Assist with writing programming code, configuring infrastructure, and troubleshooting technical issues
- Use Python code libraries to perform advanced data analysis and extracting insight
- Help brainstorm innovative research ideas or refine proposals
- Assist in streamlining content creation that supports active learning, e.g., study guides, interactive scenarios
“Our first goal is to ensure a seamless rollout to our medical students, as well as our students at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In the next several months, we will be focusing on evaluating the student experience and how the tool supports curricular success,” says Paul Lawrence, Dean for Scholarly and Research Technologies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Over time, we hope to expand advanced AI access to a variety of learning and teaching cohorts through the Mount Sinai Health System.”
“This technology isn’t here to replace clinical judgment—it’s here to support it,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System. “Students aren’t using AI to make medical decisions, but to sharpen their thinking, challenge their assumptions, and become more confident, critical thinkers. Tools like this can enhance how students learn and problem-solve, but they will never replace human instincts and relationships at the heart of medicine. Our goal is to teach future clinicians and researchers how to work thoughtfully with technology—bringing the best of both worlds together to improve care and advance discovery.”
The ChatGPT Edu rollout builds on other major recent Mount Sinai AI initiatives, including the launch of its new AI building, the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Children’s Health, and the recent announcement of the AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center.
About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is internationally renowned for its outstanding research, educational, and clinical care programs. It is the sole academic partner for the seven member hospitals* of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic health systems in the United States, providing care to New York City’s large and diverse patient population.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai offers highly competitive MD, PhD, MD-PhD, and master’s degree programs, with enrollment of more than 1,200 students. It has the largest graduate medical education program in the country, with more than 2,600 clinical residents and fellows training throughout the Health System. Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers 13 degree-granting programs, conducts innovative basic and translational research, and trains more than 560 postdoctoral research fellows.
Ranked 11th nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is among the 99th percentile in research dollars per investigator according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. More than 4,500 scientists, educators, and clinicians work within and across dozens of academic departments and multidisciplinary institutes with an emphasis on translational research and therapeutics. Through Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the Health System facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of medical breakthroughs made at Mount Sinai.
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Mount Sinai Health System member hospitals: The Mount Sinai Hospital; Mount Sinai Brooklyn; Mount Sinai Morningside; Mount Sinai Queens; Mount Sinai South Nassau; Mount Sinai West; and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 11 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report’s® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2024-2025.
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