Last week Healthcare Innovation interviewed Chenyang Lu, Ph.D., founding director of the AI for Health Institute at Washington University, St. Louis, about the value of taking a multidisciplinary approach to uniting AI researchers and health professionals. UC San Diego is taking a similar approach with the establishment of the Institute for Applied Health Intelligence, which it describes as a a multidisciplinary hub designed to leverage the latest digital technology to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. 

UCSD said that combining speed, state-of-the-art research infrastructure and cross-disciplinary expertise will allow the institute to tackle systemic challenges at scale and generate innovative new solutions.

“The convergence of computational power and biological insight represents the next frontier of medicine,” said John Carethers, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Sciences at UC San Diego, in a statement. “By erasing the traditional boundaries between engineering, medicine, business and data science, we are creating a collaborative ecosystem where the most complex health challenges are met with a unified, university-wide response.”

The institute will unify experts from UC San Diego Health and faculty across six academic schools. This collaboration bridges the experience of top-ranked institutions — including the School of Medicine, Jacobs School of Engineering, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the Rady School of Management — with the agility of newer, growing schools such as the Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing and the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science.

“UC San Diego is a place with a history of pushing the limits of what’s possible, especially when it comes to integrating technology into real-world medicine,” said Amy Sitapati, M.D., inaugural director of the new institute and Lawrence S. Friedman Professor of Population Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in a statement. “If research is the brain and clinical care is the body, this institute will serve as the spinal cord, connecting our schools and care delivery into one responsive, intelligent organism.”

Beyond the academic schools, the institute will involve specialized centers, including the world-renowned San Diego Supercomputer Center and the School of Medicine’s Division of Biomedical Informatics, led by Sitapati. To ensure these technologies are implemented mindfully, the institute will also partner closely with the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity, and the Jacobs Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health.

With a goal to unite more than 50 faculty and empower 750 trainees, the new institute is built upon three strategic pillars:
• Health Intelligence and Implementation Leadership: Developing leaders capable of managing large-scale digital transformations and command center implementations.
• Training and Education: Offering advanced degrees and professional certificate programs to cultivate a new generation of multidisciplinary experts who can envision and navigate the future of medicine through health intelligence.
• Innovation, Outcomes and Research: Driving scalable, AI-enabled solutions in personalized medicine and population analytics to move discovery from the lab to the bedside.