MIT Sloan HSI Research Fund: Supporting Pioneering Healthcare Solutions
At MIT Sloan, we tackle healthcare’s biggest challenges armed with our strengths in analytics, operations, and incentives. The Health Systems Initiative (HSI) professors connect with industry leaders, public health experts, researchers, and students to deliver real-world improvements in health and lower costs. HSI projects focus on evidence-based action research that can make a difference right now.
The HSI Research Fund is the engine that makes this work possible. It provides critical support and seed funding for innovative projects that address timely healthcare issues. Since its launch in 2019, the Fund has enabled 26 projects with over $1.9 million in philanthropic support, primarily to procure crucial research data and to fund MIT student stipends for hands-on research with faculty. Many project teams also include collaborations with healthcare organizations and academic partners.
Impact Highlights
● More than 30 peer-reviewed papers were published in the past year, with HSI researchers featured in outlets like Science Magazine and Scientific Inquirer.
● New teaching cases developed on AI for healthcare decision support and organizational processes are now used in MIT Sloan classrooms and at other universities
● Publicly available transplant policy simulator created for practitioners and policymakers.
● Collaborations with UMass Memorial Hospital, SilverCloud by Amwell, Oregon Health Authority, and the US Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
● Toolkit created for workplace health committees to help them redesign work to improve worker wellbeing
● Briefings delivered to the US Department of Labor, state regulators, and members of Congress.
● Dozens of MIT students have gained hands-on research experience, gathered material for their dissertations, and are contributing to publications, case studies, and real-world solutions.
Recent Project Spotlights
Food-as-Medicine Program: Joseph Doyle and colleagues evaluated healthy meal interventions for patients with diabetes, finding modest health improvements and highlighting the need for further research on the role of nutrition programs in improving health outcomes.
MRI Resource Optimization: Georgia Perakis and her team are helping UMass Memorial Hospital assess expanding MRI services to reduce patient backlog, balancing cost and access.
Warehouse Work and Worker Wellbeing: Erin Kelly and colleagues are investigating how work redesign may improve workers' health and wellbeing through a cluster-randomized trial of workplace interventions. To date, they have shown lower psychological distress and lower turnover at intervention sites. They are continuing with additional analyses.
Optimizing a digital mental health platform: Rahul Mazumder and Ph.D. candidate Brian Liu are collaborating with an industry leader on research to understand how to improve patient success rates.
2025 Funded Projects
In 2025 year, six new faculty-led projects received support, addressing urgent health care needs:
Ben Vatter: Improving risk adjustment in Medicare Advantage to reduce costs and improve access.
Catherine Tucker: Investigating AI-enabled medical devices and the impact of privacy regulations on innovation.
Chara Podimata: Using Large Language Models to identify and reduce bias in mental health care.
Georgia Perakis: Developing AI-based decision support for patient assignment at UMass Medical Center.
Tom Kochan: Studying labor-management collaboration on AI adoption to improve job quality and patient outcomes.
Tong Liu: Modeling the role of brokers in employer-sponsored health insurance markets to inform policy.
HSI projects deliver solutions that help healthcare organizations cut costs, improve efficiency, and enhance patient care - creating lasting partnerships and real change. For more information about the fund or to collaborate with HSI, please write to healthsystems@mit.edu