Peter L. Elkin, MD, Elected to Mastership in the American College of Physicians
Peter L. Elkin, MD, Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Biomedical Informatics, has been elected to mastership in the American College of Physicians (ACP).
Peter L. Elkin, MD, MACP, FACMI, who directs Mount Sinai’s new Center for Biomedical Informatics, has been elected to Mastership in the American College of Physicians (ACP). Dr. Elkin is Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Director of The Mount Sinai Center for Biomedical Informatics; Vice Chair of Informatics in the Department of Medicine and Vice President of Biomedical and Translational Informatics at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Under Dr. Elkin’s direction, Mount Sinai will continue to improve and implement research discoveries in clinical practice to provide better quality of care for patients.
ACP Masterships are highly competitive and only given to the most accomplished individuals after rigorous comparison. According to the ACP, Masters are selected based on their "personal character, positions of honor, contributions towards furthering the purposes of the ACP, eminence in practice or in medical research, or other attainments in science or in the art of medicine." The Master must be distinguished by the significance of his or her contributions to the field of medicine.
Biomedical Informatics is a new academic program at Mount Sinai that focuses on health informatics and bioinformatics research. The program integrates the wealth of biological data collected in Mount Sinai’s genomics and proteomics laboratories with phenotypic data stored in the hospital’s clinical information systems. This new school-wide center Dr. Elkin is spearheading emphasizes translational research and aids Mount Sinai in its efforts to improve the institution’s ability to translate basic research into clinical practice, which will ultimately lead to timely improvements in patient care.
It is a tremendous privilege to have been elected to Mastership in the ACP. It is one of the most humbling experiences of my academic career. Medicine is a team effort, so this award also pays tribute to my current colleagues at Mount Sinai and former colleagues at Mayo Clinic, with whom I have had the pleasure of collaborating, says Dr. Elkin. "This award reinforces the importance of bioinformatics and its role in helping us provide better treatments to our patients."
A background in mathematics, computer sciences and clinical medicine led Dr. Elkin to an interest in Biomedical Informatics. He has been working in the field since 1981 and has been researching health data representation since 1987.
Dr. Elkin is joining the ranks of other prominent Mount Sinai ACP Mastership recipients, such as Arthur H. Rubenstein (1987), Christine K. Cassel (1997), Barry S. Coller, MD (2003) and Louis M. Aledort, MD (2004).
Dr. Elkin received his Bachelor of Science from Union College and his MD degree from New York Medical College. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Lahey Clinic and his National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine sponsored fellowship in Medical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to joining Mount Sinai in August 2008, he worked at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, where he served as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Biomedical Informatics Research Collaborative.
A Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and chair of the International Medical Informatics Association’s Working Group on Human Factors Engineering in Health Informatics, Dr. Elkin was also the index recipient of the Homer R. Warner award for outstanding contribution to the field of Medical Informatics in 1998. He was awarded the Mayo Department of Medicine’s Laureate Award in 2005. In 2008, he received a best paper award in Translational Biology by the American Medical Informatics Association. Dr. Elkin has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and is a frequent keynote speaker for Biomedical Informatics Symposia.
About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The Mount Sinai Hospital is one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. Founded in 1852, Mount Sinai today is a 1,171-bed tertiary-care teaching facility that is internationally acclaimed for excellence in clinical care. Last year, nearly 50,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients, and there were nearly 450,000 outpatient visits to the Medical Center.
Mount Sinai School of Medicine is internationally recognized as a leader in groundbreaking clinical and basic-science research, as well as having an innovative approach to medical education. With a faculty of more than 3,400 in 38 clinical and basic science departments and centers, Mount Sinai ranks among the top 20 medical schools in receipt of National Institute of Health (NIH) grants.
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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