Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich signed Thursday a multiagency agreement to launch a new higher education institute in North Bethesda dedicated to artificial intelligence in health care, with the goal of establishing a magnetic academic-industrial complex akin to what’s envisioned for Northern Virginia’s National Landing.
The budding collaboration — dubbed The University of Maryland 3 – Institute for Health Computing, or UM-3-IHC — involves Montgomery County, the University of Maryland campuses in Baltimore and College Park and the University of Maryland Medical System Corporation (UMMS), a hospital network. Those parties have entered a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, to create and fund the institute, with $15 million in seed funding coming from Montgomery County perhaps as early as February, assuming the county council approves it, which it likely will.
The institute envisions, among other things, using modern computing technology to advance so-called “dry lab” life science research. That is, experimentation conducted through computer modeling, as opposed to, say, test tubes full of actual viruses and whatnot in “wet labs.” UMMS would provide “real-time access to patient populations” through “de-identified data” derived from millions of patients’ electronic health care records, according to the MOU, furnished to the Washington Business Journal on Wednesday.
