Mount Sinai partners with AI startup to detect and manage kidney disease

Mount Sinai Health System on Friday announced an exclusive multiyear license and partnership with RenalytixAI, an artificial-intelligence startup with offices in New York and the United Kingdom. The goal is to reduce the $98 billion in preventable kidney disease and dialysis costs by predicting which patients are at the greatest risk of advanced kidney disease and taking steps to treat them early on.

The venture will draw from the more than 3 million electronic health records in Mount Sinai's system, plus an additional 43,000 patient records in Mount Sinai's BioMe BioBank, part of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine. The bank collects DNA and blood serum from a diverse patient base to identify biomarkers, substances that can indicate disease, infection or environmental exposure. All data will be de-identified to protect patient privacy

"We can look at relationships that we could never look at before," said RenalytixAI CEO James McCullough. "Ultimately, we're trying to identify who is going to progress with kidney disease and how rapidly they're going to progress."

About 1 million Mount Sinai patients are either diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or are of African ancestry, two of the major at-risk groups for kidney disease. Most patients don't show up for treatment until 70% to 80% of their renal function has been compromised. Often they "crash" into dialysis or require other expensive end-stage treatments.

"The idea that we might be able to more proactively identify individuals at risk and coordinate their care in a true example of population health is very exciting," said Dr. Barbara Murphy, dean for clinical integration and population health management, chairwoman of the department of internal medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and chairwoman of the RenalytixAI scientific advisory board.

Renalytix, a stand-alone entity, launched this year with support from EKF Diagnostics, which is traded on the London Stock exchange. The startup formed with the specific intent of partnering with Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, which works to commercialize Mount Sinai discoveries and inventions into products and services, McCullough explained. The partners did not disclose the financial details of the deal.

"We're focusing on translating Mount Sinai discoveries into products that benefit patients," said Erik Lium, senior vice president at Mount Sinai Innovation Partners. "We're very pleased to be working with RenalytixAI to advance some of the technologies developed at Mount Sinai into more mature stages."

Initially the company, which has five employees, will work out of lab space at Mount Sinai, McCullough said. The partners aim to release the first commercial product in the second quarter of 2019.

"Mount Sinai partners with AI startup to detect and manage kidney disease" originally appeared in Crain's New York Business.