Shaping the Future of Digital Health

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This story is from the 2024 issue of Discoveries, a UC San Diego Health Sciences magazine.

Imagine a hospital-based mission control center fueled by artificial intelligence that can monitor patient health, predict patient flow and identify and diagnose treatment options in real time.

That’s the vision of the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (CHI), which is already using technology to bridge the divide between health care and the human experience.

Launched in 2021 and recently infused with a generous $22 million in gifts from Joan and Irwin Jacobs in 2023, the Center for Health Innovation is leveraging the power of AI and human-centered technology to drive advancements in patient care. 

The Jacobs’ gifts will make the development of the new mission control center a reality within the next three to five years. It will reside in Jacobs Medical Center, the 10-story, 245-bed academic medical center in La Jolla, which the Jacobs generously donated $100 million to build.

“We are at a pivotal point with AI, not just in health care, but in society as a whole,” said Christopher Longhurst, MD, executive director of CHI and system chief medical officer at UC San Diego Health. “We are developing new tools that are transforming our ability to use data to drive better patient care decisions and create better operational workflows.”

“And this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Longhurst said, adding that in the next five to 10 years, he expects to see a health care revolution with the emergence of generative AI and the implementation of digital health innovations.

Of the AI tools UC San Diego Health is currently testing, Longhurst said several stand out for their potential impact on clinicians including:

• Working with Amazon Web Services, Open AI and other partners to create a secure, HIPPA-complaint generative AI environment.
• Piloting generative AI in patient messaging with electronic health record vendor Epic Systems to help manage incoming messages to providers in ambulatory areas.
• Testing physician network Doximity’s DocsGPT platform to support clinicians with writing insurance letters, denial rebuttals and chronic condition referrals.

“While we must proceed cautiously, we find ourselves on the precipice of a groundbreaking era,” Longhurst said.

The Jacobs Center for Health Innovation is modeled after the University Health Network’s Techna Institute, located within the organization’s hospital sites and at the University of Toronto. Similar innovation centers are housed at UC San Francisco, Washington University, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic and New York University. 

“We believe the Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health will lead the development of new ideas and digital tools that measurably improve health quality and patient care for a broad population — creating a model for other hospitals nationally,” said Irwin Jacobs, co-founder, founding chairman and CEO Emeritus of Qualcomm and a founding faculty member of UC San Diego, serving as a professor of electrical and computer engineering from 1966 to 1972.

The digital health hub will monitor patient health and safety through the integration of data streams from cameras, sensors, electronic health records, bedside monitors, imaging, wearable tracking devices and other sources. The goal is to develop AI algorithms and models that proactively improve personalized treatment, health equity and patient experience.

Since the Center for Health Innovation’s launch in 2021, a novel, multi-modal AI-based sepsis prediction algorithm for UC San Diego Health inpatients now pinpoints patients who are at the greatest risk for developing the deadly infection that can cause organ failure. Remote telemonitoring of 2,500 patients with chronic diseases helps keep them at home and out of the emergency department. And radiologists are now using AI to detect abnormalities by finding patterns in thousands of scans the algorithms can sift through in mere minutes.

Albert Hsiao, MD, PhD, professor of radiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and radiologist at UC San Diego Health, said that the AI algorithms he and his team have implemented to scan, interpret and analyze imaging has catapulted their efficiency. What used to take an hour now takes about 10 minutes, he said.

“Leveraging this technology to do things more efficiently helps us diagnose conditions that we couldn’t diagnose before,” Hsiao said. “It’s another step in the evolution of technology — to use AI to change the way we are able to refine our craft.”