Industry Insight

Mount Sinai Launches Tech Fund for BIPOC, Women Innovators

Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the commercialization arm of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York has launched i3 Prism, a technology commercialization fund focused on women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) health care innovators.

This unique opportunity empowers diverse innovators, including Mount Sinai’s faculty, staff, and students, to help advance technologies and develop commercialization plans. Participating innovators can receive up to $33,000 in funding, based on their work’s milestone achievements, in an effort to bring innovations to life and improve health and well-being for all people.

MSIP and its collaborators aspire to increase access to funding for Mount Sinai inventors, regardless of field, and the fund is available to all teams across the entire Health System. i3 Prism is the newest addition to Mount Sinai’s i3 (innovation, inflection and impact) family of funds, supporting innovation and advancing Mount Sinai technologies.

“i3 Prism will enable women and BIPOC innovators to take the next step in advancing breakthrough health care technologies to benefit patients,” says Erik Lium, PhD, president of MSIP and chief commercial innovation officer of Mount Sinai. “This fund will directly support i3 Prism awardees in bringing their solutions to the next level.”

The fund was launched by MSIP, in collaboration with the following:

• the Diversity and Innovation Hub, led by Gary C. Butts, MD, executive vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Mount Sinai Health System and dean for diversity programs, policy, and community affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai;

• Mount Sinai BioDesign, directed by Joshua Bederson, MD, the Leonard I. Malis, MD/Corinne and Joseph Graber professor and system chair of neurosurgery, and Benjamin Rapoport, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of neurosurgery;

• the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, led by its dean, Marta Filizola, PhD, the Sharon and Frederick Klingenstein/Nathan Kase, MD professor;

• the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, chaired by Thomas J. Fuchs, DrSc, the Barbara T. Murphy, MD professor of artificial intelligence and human health;

• the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai, directed by Zahi Fayad, PhD, the Lucy G. Moses professor in medical imaging and bioengineering; and

• the Mount Sinai ConduITS – Institutes for Translational Sciences, directed by Rosalind Wright, MD, MPH, principal investigator and dean for translational biomedical sciences.

— Source: Mount Sinai Health System

AMIA-Led Initiative Addresses Documentation Burden

AMIA is proud to announce leadership of AMIA 25x5—an effort to reduce the US clinical documentation burden. AMIA will advance the action plan and recommendations established in early 2021 by the 25x5 Symposium to Reduce Documentation Burden on US Clinicians by 75% by 2025, a National Library of Medicine-funded initiative with partnership among AMIA, Vanderbilt University, and Columbia University.

Documentation burden, which has gained increasing attention over the last few years as EHR use has increased, is the stress imposed by the excessive work required to generate clinical records of healthcare-related interactions. The burden of clinical documentation on professionals has had a proven negative impact on health care. This burden leads to a variety of negative outcomes, including clinician burnout and decreased job satisfaction, increased medical errors, and hospital-acquired conditions.

"Reducing documentation burden on US clinicians is an urgent priority within the health care community," says AMIA board chair and president Gretchen Purcell Jackson, MD, PhD, FACS, FACMI, FAMIA, vice president and scientific medical officer for Intuitive Surgical, and an associate professor of surgery, pediatrics, and biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "AMIA has the best access to those with the subject matter expertise necessary to tackle this challenge. Bringing together health systems, providers, vendors, and policy advocates along with the expertise of the AMIA membership is integral to moving forward on these efforts."

In early March, AMIA established a 25x5 Task Force chaired by Sarah Rossetti, PhD, RN, FACMI, FAMIA, FAAN, with Kenrick Cato, RN, PhD, CPHIMS, FAAN, acting as the AMIA Board of Directors liaison. The 25x5 Task Force convenes more than 20 AMIA members divided into three separate workstreams based on expertise: health systems/providers, health IT vendor, and policy and advocacy.

The mission of the task force is to reduce documentation burden for US clinicians to 25% of current state in the next five years and optimize EHR and related vendor solutions by prioritizing and implementing the 25x5 Symposium calls to action and recommendations through partnerships and advocacy with health systems, professional societies, and public/private sector organizations in order to spread these solutions across the US health system.

"I am proud to lead AMIA’s efforts in this critical initiative," says AMIA 25x5 task force chair Sarah Rossetti. "Working collectively with Vanderbilt, AMIA, and Columbia provided significant discovery for the recommendations and calls to action that we can now move forward with, using the expertise of our task force."

With an overall goal to affect change and drive completion of the symposium action items, AMIA will guide workflows and innovation to optimize clinical documentation from its current state to information tools that support the delivery of safe, high quality, high value, continuous patient care. As part of this vision, billing requirements, medicolegal issues, and regulatory requirements should be reduced, eliminated, or automated where possible, or rely on parallel documentation that does not require any effort by the clinician, where appropriate. Fundamental to this initiative is the broad recognition that documentation for these nonclinical purposes should not engage the clinician’s time and attention. The task force is focused on all types of health professionals. Solutions will seek to eliminate unnecessary documentation all together and will not shift work from one clinician to another clinician.

More than 300 participants from approximately 140 organizations attended the 2021 Symposium. Attendees included stakeholders from clinical settings, academia, research, industry (including EHR vendors and innovative start-up companies), government agencies, payers, professional organizations, and patients. The Symposium Summary Report includes strategies and approaches aimed to reduce clinician documentation burden on US clinicians by 75% and identifies 82 prioritized action items across four themes: accountability, evidence matters, education and training, and innovation of technology.

— Source: AMIA