CHICAGO _ Northwestern Medicine will use a $25 million gift to develop artificial intelligence as a tool in the fight against heart disease.
The donation will help fund "a first-of-its-kind center that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance the study and treatment of cardiovascular disease," Northwestern Medicine announced Tuesday.
"Cardiovascular disease remains the No. 1 killer of Americans," Dr. Patrick McCarthy, executive director of the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, said in a news release. "Artificial intelligence offers an abundance of new ways to research and treat this pernicious disease."
Since creating the institute, Northwestern Memorial Hospital's cardiology and heart surgery program went from unranked to seventh in the annual U.S. News & World Report hospital rankings. At the same time, the number of cardiac surgeries performed at the hospital has increased fourfold.
Northwestern Memorial is working with four companies to explore new ways to use AI to treat cardiovascular disease. One such partnership with San Francisco-based medical technology company Bay Labs employs AI to help analyze cardiac ultrasound images for better diagnosis and management of heart disease.
Charles Cadieu, co-founder and CEO of Bay Labs, said the firm is launching studies at Northwestern Memorial in the coming months to make the AI product offerings more widespread and improve the quality of echocardiogram interpretation by physicians.
The $25 million donation from the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation is the latest from the Neil Bluhm, founder and president of Chicago-based JMB Realty Corp. Bluhm's support began in 2005 with the initial gift that recruited McCarthy and created the cardiovascular institute at Northwestern.
