At Weill Cornell Medicine, our commitment to changing medicine shapes every discovery we make, every patient we treat, and every life we touch. When medicine moves forward, the things that matter most move forward with it: how people live, how long they thrive, and what becomes possible for future generations.
In the five years since we launched our commitment to changing medicine, we’ve witnessed seismic, generation-altering shifts in the healthcare landscape: the miraculous COVID vaccines, the rapid ascent of artificial intelligence as a diagnostic and predictive tool, and gene editing approaches — including at least one developed by a pair of our alumni — that are saving the lives of people who would otherwise succumb to their illnesses.
All of these advances reflect the culmination of decades worth of global scientific research and refinement of approaches that built on knowledge and experience acquired over time, trial and error. At Weill Cornell, we are building on our excellence to create new gold standards for care, using cutting-edge research and innovation to enhance our superior track record of diagnosis and treatment with a future-forward vision that centers healthy longevity for all.
Take our longstanding dedication to women’s health. Our OBGYNs deliver more babies than any other doctors in New York City, and Weill Cornell Medicine is known around the world for advancing infertility treatment and managing high-risk pregnancies with exceptional skill. Now, a growing body of evidence tells us that pregnancy is not just a moment in a woman’s life; it is a window into her long-term health. The chronic conditions that can emerge during pregnancy such as hypertension, diabetes and mental illness often signal risks that will follow a woman for decades.
By building on the data we are gathering and the expertise we have developed, we are transforming how we care for mothers not only in the days after delivery, but across their lifetimes. Through research-tested interventions that capitalize on coordination and collaboration between specialists, our goal is to ensure that every woman leaves our care on a trajectory of lasting health, and that her children do too. By changing medicine for women in this way, we can change the health of their entire families.
Technology, of course, can also enhance the healthcare we provide, and nowhere is this more urgent — or promising — than in cancer care. As you’ll learn, the ability to detect tumors and analyze data is advancing at a remarkable pace. At Weill Cornell Medicine, we are accelerating that progress by deepening our integration of radiology, genetics and computational biomedicine with community engagement and public policy. The result could be a transformation in how we screen for cancer by identifying and treating the disease in people who were never before recognized as being at risk — potentially changing the very meaning of early detection.
These are just two of many examples of how changing medicine changes everything. In each, the work we do today creates a different future — for individual patients, for communities, and for science. When medicine changes, lives change. And that, ultimately, is what we are here to do.
Robert A. Harrington, M.D.
Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean, Weill Cornell Medicine
Provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University
Portrait: Sam Kerr
