Mount Sinai Launches Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research
First venture launched by an academic medical center to use blockchain to solve health care and medical science problems
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare today announced the official opening of the Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research. The ambitious venture—the first of its kind at any academic medical center—will place Mount Sinai on the cutting edge of research that uses the technology, a distributed, decentralized secure database system originally developed for Bitcoin, to solve problems in health care and medical science.
The Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research is led by Joel Dudley, PhD, Executive Vice President of Precision Health at Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Endowed Chair in Biomedical Data Science, Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare, along with Noah Zimmerman, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and Director of the Health Data and Design Innovation Center.
Dr. Dudley’s research efforts focus on the application of data-driven approaches and machine intelligence to solve problems in biology and health care. The new center complements Dr. Dudley’s previous work developing predictive health applications from electronic health records, wearables, and related digital health information.
Dr. Zimmerman’s research involves designing data-driven technologies to improve decision-making in health care. Previously, Dr. Zimmerman was the co-founder of a venture backed health-tech startup and served as a data science lead at Pivotal Software, Inc., where he delivered predictive models for multibillion-dollar companies in health care and biotech.
The center’s research will lay the groundwork for its forthcoming industry partnership program for companies looking to develop biomedical blockchain solutions that address problems in both clinical medicine and biomedical research.
“There is a lot of excitement around the possibilities for blockchain technology in health care,” says Dr. Dudley. “However, we still have lots of hard work ahead to identify the most salient features of blockchain technologies to solve real-word health care problems.”
The center will work toward developing health care blockchain applications by:
- Conducting scholarly evaluations of blockchain-enabled solutions;
- Providing partnership and consulting opportunities with companies working on these projects;
- Building and testing its own systems within the Mount Sinai Health System.
“At Mount Sinai, we bring to the table deep expertise in biomedical data, machine learning, and data governance. This experience will allow us to address many of the most promising uses for blockchain in biomedicine with the goal of improving healthcare delivery and reducing costs,” says Dr. Zimmerman.
Numerous companies are already exploring the use of blockchain technologies in biology and health care. These applications include encouraging individual participation in drug development and clinical research trials, expanding access to health insurance products in underserved markets, improving quality control in the pharmaceutical industry to reduce counterfeit drugs, and enhancing research reproducibility.
“There is an opportunity to reimagine how we organize and incentivize individuals and organizations to promote health,” says Dr. Zimmerman. “Our aim is to understand whether blockchain, and associated technologies, can be used to solve open problems in health care and biomedical research.”
“We expect that some early use cases could emerge from areas where existing systems and approaches fall short,” says Dr. Dudley. “The fragmented nature of regional and global health care systems prevents the flow of vital information and creates barriers to access for underserved groups. We see the potential for blockchain and related technologies to enable applications that support more unified health care ecosystems and serve the greater goals of realizing national and global precision health networks.“
About the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare
The Mount Sinai Institute for Next Generation Healthcare is a new model of research, innovation, and market delivery founded in 2016 to expedite and help shape the impending revolution in health care. Our vision of next generation health care harnesses cutting-edge science, technology and analytics to enhance the health and vitality of people everywhere. Transformational technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, genomic sequencing, sensors and wearable devices, Internet of Things, and cloud computing offer unprecedented opportunities to solve global health challenges. The mission of the institute is to transform the world’s experience of health care through these technologies to create a patient-centered system.
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 eight 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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