New Center Aims to Accelerate AI Research and Personalized Treatment in Children’s Health
New York, NY, March 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has launched the Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Children’s Health, the first dedicated center of its kind in New York City—a pioneering initiative that aims to improve health care outcomes for children using AI. The Center will develop AI-powered solutions to enhance diagnostics, personalize treatments, and optimize health care delivery for youth and adolescents. Benjamin S. Glicksberg, PhD, an expert in digital health and clinical informatics, will lead the Center.
“The Center for AI in Children’s Health underscores Mount Sinai’s commitment to pioneering AI-driven technologies that will enable Mount Sinai to deliver world-class care to our children,” said Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS, Chief Executive Officer and Professor and Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Distinguished Chair, Mount Sinai Health System. “As one of the first centers of its kind in New York City and nationwide, this unique and groundbreaking initiative positions Mount Sinai at the forefront of innovation in health care. Our kids are our future, and under Dr. Glicksberg’s leadership, the Center for AI in Children’s Health will advance children’s health outcomes for generations to come.”
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, said, “The establishment of the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Children’s Health exemplifies Mount Sinai’s dedication to integrating cutting-edge technologies into patient care. By harnessing the power of AI, we are offering more precise diagnostics and personalized treatments for our youngest patients. With Dr. Glicksberg at the helm, this new center will be instrumental in shaping the future of pediatric medicine as we take bold steps toward innovation and excellence in health care for the next generation.”
Dr. Glicksberg, who will also serve as Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said, “While AI has advanced at a remarkable pace in many areas of medicine, pediatric medicine has unfortunately lagged due to stricter privacy considerations, more complicated regulatory pathways, and limited data infrastructure. This new Center is dedicated to addressing these challenges by safely developing, testing, and embedding AI directly into child health care—enabling earlier diagnoses, preventive measures, computer-augmented imaging for complex conditions, expedited drug discovery, and highly personalized treatment plans. There’s no better place for this effort than Mount Sinai, or a more talented team of researchers to innovate alongside. I’m thrilled to lead this critical work and confident that we’re shaping a brighter future for child health care.”
AI continues to transform health care, however innovation remains significantly underrepresented in child health due to specific standards necessary, but complex regulatory challenges and limited resources, delaying the benefits these technologies could bring to child health care. The Center hopes to address the current limitations by creating an integrated data infrastructure, advancing multimodal AI research, embracing personalized medicine, and enhancing health economics and care delivery.
The Center will focus on:
- Building an AI-driven Children’s Health Data Hub to unify multi-modal and multi-omic patient data.
- Spearheading clinical trials for AI approaches to enhance diagnostics, predictive modeling, and real-time monitoring at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital.
- Advancing personalized medicine through multi-omics research, rare disease identification, and pharmacogenomics.
- Optimizing health care delivery with Mount Sinai’s Center for Child Health Services Research to leverage AI for improving efficiency, patient outcomes, and resource allocation.
Dr. Glicksberg joins Mount Sinai with significant academic and industry experience. He previously was an Assistant Professor in Genetics and Genomic Sciences and a member of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai. He then served on the leadership team at a genomics-based drug discovery startup targeting progressive diseases of aging. His experience bridging the gap between research and clinical care—including expertise in AI-driven research, health care, biotechnology, and translational science—positions him as a leader in AI innovation.
The Center for Artificial Intelligence in Children’s Health is established under The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, directed by Bruce D. Gelb, MD, and co-sponsored by the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at Mount Sinai, chaired by Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, CPH.
“As Chair of the Windreich Department of AI and Human Health, I’m proud to co-sponsor the Center for AI in Children’s Health,” Dr. Nadkarni said. “By harnessing the power of advanced data science and clinical expertise, we aim to usher in a new era for child health care—delivering faster diagnoses, personalized treatments, and transformative outcomes. Under Dr. Glicksberg’s leadership, we stand poised to shape a healthier future for children everywhere.”
About The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute
The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute is a translational research enterprise with the mission of advancing knowledge and therapies for diseases affecting infants, children, and adolescents.
Led by Bruce D. Gelb, MD, the Institute assembles outstanding physician-scientists and scientists in an intellectually rich and supportive environment, which fosters collaborative scientific investigation as well as the training of the next generation of scientific leaders for pediatric medicine. We currently have more than 100 faculty members who specialize in allergy and asthma, cardiovascular disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, obesity and diabetes, child health services, and more.
Faculty at the Institute work in a multidisciplinary manner with researchers and physicians in departments and institutes at Mount Sinai. Together, we strive toward the objectives of developing robust paradigms for understanding the effects of genetics and the environment on the health of infants, children, and adolescents, and personalizing pediatric medicine through genetics and genomics. In addition, we have taken substantial steps in expanding our reach in five exciting strategic areas: pediatric precision medicine; pediatric clinical trials; child health services research; artificial intelligence in children’s health; and community-based research engagement.
About Mount Sinai’s Windreich Department of AI and Human Health
Led by Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH—an international authority on the safe, effective, and ethical use of AI in health care—Mount Sinai’s Windreich Department of AI and Human Health is the first of its kind at a U.S. medical school, pioneering transformative advancements at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human health.
The department is committed to leveraging AI in a responsible, effective, equitable, and safe manner to transform research, clinical care, education, and operations. By bringing together world-class AI expertise, cutting-edge infrastructure, and unparalleled computational power, the department is advancing breakthroughs in multi-scale, multimodal data integration while streamlining pathways for rapid testing and translation into practice.
The department benefits from dynamic collaborations across Mount Sinai, including with the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai—a partnership between the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, and the Mount Sinai Health System—which complements its mission by advancing data-driven approaches to improve patient care and health outcomes.
At the heart of this innovation is the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which serves as a central hub for learning and collaboration. This unique integration enables dynamic partnerships across institutes, academic departments, hospitals, and outpatient centers, driving progress in disease prevention, improving treatments for complex illnesses, and elevating quality of life on a global scale.
In 2024, the Department’s innovative NutriScan AI application, developed by the Mount Sinai Health System Clinical Data Science team in partnership with Department faculty, earned Mount Sinai Health System the prestigious Hearst Health Prize. NutriScan is designed to facilitate faster identification and treatment of malnutrition in hospitalized patients. This machine learning tool improves malnutrition diagnosis rates and resource utilization, demonstrating the impactful application of AI in health care.
About the Hasso Plattner Institute at Mount Sinai
At the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, the tools of data science, biomedical and digital engineering, and medical expertise are used to improve and extend lives. The Institute represents a collaboration between the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, and the Mount Sinai Health System.
Under the leadership of Girish Nadkarni, MD, MPH, who directs the Institute, and Professor Lothar Wieler, a globally recognized expert in public health and digital transformation, they jointly oversee the partnership, driving innovations that positively impact patient lives while transforming how people think about personal health and health systems.
The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai receives generous support from the Hasso Plattner Foundation. Current research programs and machine learning efforts focus on improving the ability to diagnose and treat patients.
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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