“Healthcare is the right place for responsible AI disruption. We face workforce shortages, uneven access, and increasing patient expectations for both high-tech and deeply human care,” said Dr. Marc M. Triola (right), in conversation with Dr. Paul A. Testa and Dr. Yann LeCun, who joined remotely.
Credit: NYU Langone
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. But what does it really mean for medicine? How is it changing the way care is delivered, and how can we trust it where it matters most: our health?
Those were the defining questions at NYU Langone Health’s inaugural AI symposium, Harnessing the Power of AI to Transform Care, held on October 6. The full-day event drew more than 450 attendees—faculty, staff, researchers, and national leaders—to examine how AI is reshaping clinical practice, research, and education.
“Healthcare needs AI to handle complexity, leverage vast data, and reduce national costs,” said Nader Mherabi, chief digital and information officer at NYU Langone. “With our culture, investments, and talent, NYU Langone is well positioned to lead, always guided by safety, quality, efficiency, and experience.”
Throughout the day, one conviction unified every discussion: AI must be used responsibly, ethically, and equitably—not as a rival to human judgment, but as its most powerful ally. In parallel with its technical innovations, NYU Langone is helping to shape the policy frameworks that will govern AI’s use across healthcare systems nationwide.
“AI is no longer a distant concept. It’s actively transforming how care is delivered here at NYU Langone and across the country,” said Elizabeth Golden, executive vice president for communications, marketing, government and community affairs, who moderated a panel on federal initiatives and regulatory trends. “But as technology advances at breakneck speed, policy must keep pace. The decisions we make now will shape not only how AI tools are developed, but also how they’re regulated, reimbursed, and integrated into daily practice.”
Below are five key takeaways from the symposium.
1. We build, test, and validate our models to ensure safety and trust.
“We build next-generation AI technologies, validate them internally, and deploy them to bring world-class care everywhere,” said neurosurgeon Eric K. Oermann, MD, director of the Health AI Research Lab at NYU Langone. “At the same time, we learn from patients to advance AI itself.”
From radiology to cardiology, AI tools, each benchmarked for accuracy before use, are already reducing scan times, identifying subtle abnormalities, and generating patient-friendly summaries.
“AI helps us see inside the black box—not just that something looks abnormal, but why,” said radiologist Miriam A. Bredella, MD, MBA, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Professor of Radiology and director of the .
2. Every AI initiative shares the same goal: delivering lifesaving, high-quality care.
“It’s not AI for its own sake. It’s AI in service of better care,” said Paul A. Testa, MD, JD, MPH, NYU Langone’s chief health informatics officer. “You can’t talk about AI in healthcare without talking about trust.”
That focus on trust guided discussions about fairness, transparency, and accountability. The technology’s success, speakers noted, will ultimately be measured by how it improves outcomes, empowers clinicians, and strengthens the patient experience.
3. Our unified digital infrastructure makes responsible AI deployment possible at scale.
A unified digital backbone enables innovation to scale responsibly. Decades of investment in NYU Langone’s information systems have created the foundation for safe systemwide deployment.
That same infrastructure also makes it possible to use AI to personalize care at scale. Integration turns AI from an experiment into an enterprise and enables a learning health system that becomes smarter with every patient it serves.
“The future of AI in healthcare is not generic models, but patient-specific models,” said Turing Award winner , chief AI scientist at Meta, during a fireside chat with Dr. Testa and , senior associate dean for medical education and founding director of the at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
4. Our culture of bold innovation drives the development of transformative AI tools.
Collaboration and accountable risk-taking fuel NYU Langone’s breakthroughs. Surgeons, data scientists, and educators described a culture where innovation thrives precisely because it is grounded in purpose.
“People think the robot does the surgery,” said Robert Cerfolio, MD, MBA, chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery. “But the robot does nothing until we drive it.”
5. We are equipping our workforce with AI fluency to shape the future of medicine.
AI’s promise depends on the people who use and question it. AI is not replacing the human element in medicine. It’s reinforcing it, expanding what clinicians can see, predict, and achieve.
“We’re entering a world where everyone in healthcare will engage with AI, whether they’re building it, testing it, or using it at the bedside,” said Dr. Triola. “AI fluency isn’t optional. It’s foundational.”
Fluency ensures that clinicians and researchers can interpret results responsibly and shape the technology’s evolution. The future will belong to those who combine data with discernment, and innovation with ethics.
Media Inquiries
Arielle Sklar
Phone: 646-960-2696
Arielle.Sklar@NYULangone.org
