Mount Sinai Health System to Broaden Collaboration with Sema4
Existing Collaboration has Already Driven Unprecedented Advances in Healthcare Insights for Reproductive Health and Oncology
The Mount Sinai Health System today announced an expansion of its strategic collaboration with Sema4 that will enhance the Health System’s capability to deliver the highest-quality personalized care and accelerate the development of innovative technologies to broadly benefit patients.
The new Mount Sinai – Sema4 Health Discovery Initiative builds on Mount Sinai’s existing partnership with Sema4, a patient-centered health intelligence company that is already transforming the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, notably in reproductive health and oncology. Sema4 started in 2011 as a precision health initiative within the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and was spun out as a separate company by the Health System in 2017.
The Mount Sinai – Sema4 Health Discovery Initiative will yield major benefits for Mount Sinai patients and medical research. The first will come from Sema4’s curation and analysis of Mount Sinai’s medical records, which will produce restructured and better-organized information in a secure and reliable database. This will enable Mount Sinai clinicians to better diagnose, treat, and prevent disease that might not be otherwise identifiable through a patient’s medical or family history. Data curation should also enable clinicians to more quickly and accurately identify patients who might benefit from a specific treatment or clinical trial, and then enroll them more rapidly. In addition, Sema4’s analysis of the de-identified data will enable it to significantly accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance molecular, genetic, and epidemiological research, and develop new therapies and health care solutions that improve care and benefit patients.
“Data has the promise to modernize the delivery of health care and improve personalized patient care,” said Bruce Darrow, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer and Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System. “Indeed, failing to use the health care insights within reach through data would be a disservice to our patients. With deep and historical expertise in data-driven methods, Mount Sinai looks forward to working with Sema4 to turn this promise into a reality, quickly acting on new insights from data to improve health care practices for the benefit of the patients we serve.”
“This collaboration will significantly accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance molecular, genetic, and epidemiological research, and the development of new therapies and health care solutions that improve care and benefit patients,” said Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Possible advances could include accurately identifying women who are at risk of dangerous pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia so that early action can be taken to care for mother and child, and delivering precision oncology care to patients based on a vast knowledge base of cancer treatments that have been effective for thousands of patients with very similar genetic, molecular, and lifestyle characteristics.”
The protection of patient privacy is of paramount importance to Mount Sinai. All data used in the Mount Sinai – Sema4 Health Discovery Initiative will be subject to protections that meet industry and government standards. The data provided for Sema4’s use will be de-identified under HIPAA, which means that personally identifiable information, such as a patient’s name or Social Security number, will be removed. The data will also be subject to state-of-the-art cybersecurity controls. Mount Sinai respects the decision of patients who do not want to share their data for this Initiative and will provide them with an easy-to-use, online opt-out option before any data is transferred.
Sema4 has grown into a global leader in developing data-driven health care solutions to support the delivery of precision medicine and to improve the health of patients globally. The company’s innovative health intelligence platform, Centrellis™, is enabling a more complete understanding of disease and wellness by building dynamic, predictive models using big data, AI, and machine learning.
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 more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 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 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals, receiving high "Honor Roll" status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.
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