(New York, NY – June 8, 2020) – The Mount Sinai Health System has received an award from Microsoft AI for Health to support the work of a new data science center dedicated to COVID-19 research. The Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center (MSCIC) brings together leaders from entities across Mount Sinai, including the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health, the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute.

"This partnership with Microsoft provides us with cloud resources that will accelerate our discovery, translation and implementation of digital tools in the fight against COVID-19," said Robbie Freeman, MSN, RN, Vice President of Clinical Innovation at The Mount Sinai Hospital. "Through this collaboration with AI for Health, we are leveraging the expertise of the Mount Sinai Health System in delivering world-class patient care and the Azure cloud to bring our AI-enabled products from bench to bedside."

The philanthropic Microsoft AI for Health Grant will support the care of patients with the coronavirus, enabling the Center to develop tools using artificial intelligence (AI) that enhance care and evidence-based medicine for treating COVID-19 patients. MSCIC will use Microsoft Azure cloud computing to provide researchers with access and storage for complex patient data from multiple sources including electronic health records and novel research studies. MSCIC researchers said the grant will enhance their ability to rapidly translate data science research and methods back to patient care in hospitals.
"The unprecedented threat of COVID-19 allowed MSCIC to quickly integrate data from across the Health System and address an unmet need among Mount Sinai clinicians and researchers to perform rapid clinical informatics analyses and provide answers to critical questions that could impact how patients are treated," said Patricia Savi Glowe, Senior Director of Strategy and Operations for the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health, and Research Operations Lead for the MSCIC Executive Management Team.

MSCIC represents expertise in health care delivery, health sciences, biomedical and digital engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The Center seeks to provide Mount Sinai with data analytic solutions to combat current and future threats of COVID-19, as well as rapidly develop digital health products with real-time predictive and preventive capabilities that empower patients and health care providers and improve health and health outcomes. The Center most recently launched a study called Warrior Watch, following hundreds of health care workers to monitor biometrics such as heart rate variability, sleep disruption and physical activity, through an Apple Watch in conjunction with regular surveys to better understand the level of stress and anxiety they face on the front lines of this crisis.

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