UC San Diego today announced the establishment of the Institute for Applied Health Intelligence, a multidisciplinary hub designed to leverage the latest digital technology to improve health care delivery and patient outcomes. As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates health innovation, the institute will harness transformative ideas – backed by rigorous research and implemented with agility – to achieve scalable, reliable health outcomes for all.
This institute reflects UC San Diego’s enduring commitment to innovation without boundaries. It embodies our strategic vision to transcend traditional silos, foster a deeply collaborative culture, and deliver transformative impact in education, research and care.”
Pradeep Khosla, UC San Diego Chancellor
The new institute positions UC San Diego as a global leader of the rapidly emerging field of health intelligence – an approach that turns vast amounts of health data into practical insights that help people live healthier lives. 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, MD, vice chancellor for Health Sciences at UC San Diego. “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, MD, inaugural director of the new institute and Lawrence S. Friedman Professor of Population Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “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 harness the power of 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.
“In health care, the most critical gap isn’t usually a lack of innovation, but the ‘last mile’- the systemic challenge of integrating new discoveries into the daily flow of patient care,” said Patty Maysent, CEO of UC San Diego Health. “Leveraging the intelligence of this institute will enable us to reduce clinical variation and eliminate preventable harm, ensuring that we deliver the highest standard of care to every patient, every time.”
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.
With an ambitious goal to unite more than 50 faculty and empower 750 trainees, the Institute for Applied Health Intelligence will position UC San Diego among the nation’s foremost leaders in AI-enabled health, fostering unconventional partnerships that extend the digital revolution to advance health outcomes for all.
