What You Should Know:
– Today, the department of Cedars-Sinai announced it has established a new division to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to help solve complex medical problems and enhance clinical care.
– The new division, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, or AIM will be led by Sumeet Chugh, MD, an associate director of the Smidt Heart Institute and a prominent expert in sudden cardiac arrest, who has long relied on technology and population-wide data to help demystify who might be susceptible to the usually fatal heart rhythm disturbance.
AIM Multidisciplinary Mandate
In conjunction with AIM, Cedars-Sinai has developed several key programs in which artificial intelligence is being increasingly deployed. Jason H. Moore, Ph.D., was recently named founding chair of the newly created Department of Computational Biomedicine-a systemwide program committed to advancing medical discoveries through interfacing the data sciences with clinical information.
With its current focus on cardiac imaging, sudden cardiac arrest, COVID-19 and clinical genetics, Chugh hopes that division members will tackle a broad range of medical, surgical and public health problems.
“Using a disease-based approach, AIM will enable cross-disciplinary connections between clinicians, scientists, and trainees at Cedars-Sinai at multiple levels,” said Chugh.
Recent Published AI Research
In practice, AIM recently published a study in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, employing artificial intelligence algorithms to identify heart attack risk in patients with already established coronary artery disease.
New research, from the division of AIM, was also recently published in the journal JAMA Cardiology. In the study, physician-scientists created an artificial intelligence tool that can effectively identify and distinguish between two life-threatening heart conditions that are often easy to miss: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and cardiac amyloidosis.
As the new division advances, Chugh and team are designing clinically relevant questions from the broader Cedars-Sinai Health System that can be ethically vetted, analyzed, validated, and implemented.
“We hope to function as innovators and custodians of patients’ healthcare interests and needs,” said Chugh, the Pauline and Harold Price Chair in Cardiac Electrophysiology Research. “And, most important, we are bringing discoveries directly to patient care.”
