Northwell gets $10M from Rechlers for A.I. health care research

Northwell Health and its Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research are expected to announce on Wednesday a $10 million donation by Long Island real estate developer Scott Rechler and his wife, Debby, to fund the use of artificial intelligence to address health disparities and improve medical care.

The contribution will finance the new Scott and Debby Rechler Center for Health Outcomes at Feinstein’s Institute of Health System Science, along with the recruitment of a “nationally recognized leader,” Northwell said.

The center’s first major project is a survey called Northwell Health Vital Sign, which periodically asks patients to rate their ability to move, care for themselves and do their usual activities, as well as any pain, discomfort, anxiety and depression. The survey has been sent in English and Spanish to thousands of patients.

In September, it will be offered to tens of thousands more people, and eventually to all Northwell patients, said Karina Davidson, director of the Institute of Health System Science. Northwell, the state’s largest provider of health care, treats more than 2 million people a year, 49% of whom are members of racial or ethnic minority groups, the New Hyde Park-based health care system said.

The survey responses will be analyzed using A.I., and providers will be prompted to contact patients who report distress, Davidson said. Having providers reach out to patients can be especially helpful for patients who lack the time or resources to get regular health care, she said. The survey can be sent by email, text, phone or mail, and it will be translated into numerous languages, she said.

If a survey shows that a patient has lost mobility, she said, “we can much more rapidly and proactively reach out to that person and say … ‘Is it knee pain? Is it back pain? Is it sleep problems? And we're going to get you to the … right professional, that's going to help you get back to that quality of life.’”

With patients’ consent, researchers also can use A.I. to analyze surveys and medical records to “pinpoint the medical practices that alter and improve the quality of life the most,” Davidson said. The data, which is made anonymous and protected by privacy laws, will be shared with other health researchers and insurance providers, she said. One goal will be to find the best ways to compensate providers for improving patients’ health, she said.

In health care, typically “we're always focused on trying to react to someone getting sick, versus trying to prevent them from getting sick,” Rechler, who is co-chair of Feinstein’s board of directors and a Northwell trustee, said in an interview. “With artificial intelligence enabling you to analyze massive amounts of data quickly … you can really change health outcomes in people's lives.”

The use of A.I. in health care research involves giving huge amounts of “training data” to computers so they can find patterns and make predictions, researchers say.

“The spotlight now is on the quality of the training data … and the populations that you're collecting data about,” said Matthew Hirschey, director of the Center for Computational Thinking at Duke University in North Carolina, who is not involved in the Northwell program. There's a need to include more racial and other diversity in the data, he said. Giving researchers access to new data on a large health care system's highly diverse population of patients, he said, could “open up a new world of possibilities.”

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.