Researchers from UCSF UC Berkeley Computational Precision Health (CPH) and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) have been awarded a Laude Moonshots seed grant in support of Edge Medicine, an initiative to bring intelligent, always-on AI tools to frontline healthcare in order to improve patients’ everyday lives.
Edge Medicine is one of eight projects selected for Laude Institute’s Moonshots, a competitive initiative funding computer science researchers tackling critical AI challenges with broad societal impact. The project was selected under the program’s Frontline Healthcare domain, which focuses on AI applications to support diagnosis, treatment and patient care. The Edge Medicine project will receive a $250,000 seed grant to fund six months of focused work toward a fully scoped proposal for a multi-year Moonshot lab and additional funding.
The Laude Moonshots program reflects a new model for research funding, providing no-strings-attached grants and support designed to help ambitious research teams move their work from idea to real world impact faster.
Dr. Ida Sim is the lead principal investigator for the Edge Medicine project. Sim is professor of medicine at UCSF, co-founder of JupyterHealth, and co-director of CPH at UCSF and UC Berkeley, where she is also a professor. Fernando Pérez, associate professor of statistics at UC Berkeley, co-founder of Project Jupyter and JupyterHealth, and faculty director of BIDS is a member of the project team along with CPH faculty Dr. Maya Petersen, Irene Chen, and Ahmed Alaa.
“Project Jupyter was built into the shared infrastructure of modern science, and now this team is extending that model into healthcare,” said Dave Patterson, founding board chair of Laude Institute and professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. “The open-source approach is central to why this matters: if they can make healthcare data integration less bespoke, the value is enormous. This is an ambitious, high-reward bet on precisely the infrastructure the field needs.“
About Edge Medicine
Most current health AI tools are designed around the clinic or hospital. Edge Medicine takes health AI beyond traditional healthcare systems directly to patients: delivering intelligent support continuously, in daily life, and connecting with healthcare systems seamlessly when it matters most.
“Chronic diseases affect 75% of Americans and account for 90% of U.S. healthcare spending,” said Sim. “By definition, chronic disease is 24/7 – yet today’s health AI is not. Edge Medicine aims to change that by shifting care upstream to where health outcomes are actually determined: in patients’ daily lives.”
The initiative builds on JupyterHealth, an open-source platform rooted in the Project Jupyter ecosystem, to create interoperable, community-driven infrastructure for health AI where researchers, clinicians, patients and developers can collaborate and build together.
For more information
- UCSF UC Berkeley Computational Precision Health: Center for Edge Medicine
