NYU Langone Health hosted its first artificial intelligence (AI) symposium, titled “Harnessing the Power of AI to Transform Care,” on October 6. The event attracted over 450 participants, including faculty, staff, researchers, and national leaders, to discuss how AI is changing clinical practice, research, and education in medicine.
Nader Mherabi, chief digital and information officer at NYU Langone, addressed the role of AI in healthcare. “Healthcare needs AI to handle complexity, leverage vast data, and reduce national costs,” said Mherabi. “With our culture, investments, and talent, NYU Langone is well positioned to lead, always guided by safety, quality, efficiency, and experience.”
The symposium emphasized that AI should be used responsibly alongside human judgment. Discussions also focused on developing policy frameworks for ethical use of AI in healthcare systems nationwide.
Elizabeth Golden, executive vice president for communications, marketing, government and community affairs at NYU Langone and moderator of a panel on federal initiatives and regulatory trends said: “AI is no longer a distant concept. It’s actively transforming how care is delivered here at NYU Langone and across the country. 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.”
Eric K. Oermann, MD, director of the Health AI Research Lab at NYU Langone commented on their approach: “We build next-generation AI technologies, validate them internally, and deploy them to bring world-class care everywhere. At the same time, we learn from patients to advance AI itself.”
Speakers highlighted that AI tools are already being used in areas such as radiology and cardiology at NYU Langone. These tools are designed to reduce scan times and identify abnormalities while providing summaries for patients.
Radiologist Miriam A. Bredella stated: “AI helps us see inside the black box—not just that something looks abnormal, but why.”
Paul A. Testa added: “It’s not AI for its own sake. It’s AI in service of better care. You can’t talk about AI in healthcare without talking about trust.”
The symposium stressed that trust depends on fairness and transparency in deploying these technologies.
NYU Langone’s investments in information systems have allowed safe deployment of these innovations across its network. This infrastructure enables personalized care using patient-specific models rather than generic ones.
Yann LeCun of Meta noted during a discussion with Paul A. Testa and Marc M. Triola: “The future of AI in healthcare is not generic models but patient-specific models.”
Collaboration between surgeons and data scientists was identified as essential for responsible innovation.
Robert Cerfolio explained: “People think the robot does the surgery. But the robot does nothing until we drive it.”
Dr. Triola concluded: “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…AI fluency isn’t optional—it’s foundational.”
The event underlined that responsible use of technology will depend on combining technical expertise with ethical considerations.
