What We Offer

The Houston Methodist–Rice University Digital Health Institute (DHI) is where cutting-edge research meets real-world health care transformation. We offer a dynamic, interdisciplinary environment for the design, testing and scaling of digital health solutions—empowering researchers, startups, health care innovators and industry leaders with a unique set of assets and capabilities, including:

Rich, Secure and Actionable Data Assets

  • Access cross-sectional and longitudinal data on more than 6 million patients, 79 million health care encounters and 1.3 billion clinical facts
  • Explore 20 years of streamed, timestamped health data merged with multimodal inputs (electronic medical records, imaging, labs, signals and social/environmental factors)
  • Perform large-scale benchmarking and comparative analyses using data from 100 million Medicare beneficiaries
  • Secure data integration via HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, supported by NVIDIA DGX Supercomputing

Develop and deploy real-world, data-driven innovations across clinical and research environments via collaboration with the Center for Health Data Science for Analytics (HDSA)

Federated Data Infrastructure & Privacy-Preserving AI

  • Train models across decentralized systems without sharing raw data
  • Connect insights across institutions to develop scalable, reproducible tools
  • Enable advanced analytics while protecting patient privacy through removal of HIPAA-related Protected Health Information

AI & Digital Health Testing

  • Form industry partnerships for product piloting and apply life-changing tools to the bedside in validated high-acuity care environments
  • Innovate beyond hospital walls with a post-discharge care focus 
  • Explore wearables, ambient intelligence, predictive models, digital therapeutics and more
  • Accelerate clinical adoption through IRB-ready and clinician-approved validation pathways

IP & Innovation Pipeline

  • Develop, test and implement digital health solutions with clinical and engineering teams 
  • Establish pathways for SBIR/STTR, licensing and industry partnerships
  • Learn to navigate prototyping, regulations and market readiness 
  • Benefit from $80M+ in research grant submissions combining computer engineering, clinical science and commercialization
  • Develop IP through Rice and Houston Methodist innovation offices

Education & Talent Development

  • Enroll in collaborative fellowships and internships in bioengineering, computer science, public health and more
  • Grow professionally through clinical, technical and business mentorship
  • Train in AI ethics, implementation science and digital health leadership at both institutions

Research Labs & High-Tech Facilities

  • Develop and test products in 9,000 square feet of dedicated lab space, including specialized wet labs and instrumentation facilities 
  • Innovate in 1,000 square feet of XR and Visualization Lab space 
  • Work in optics, systems integration and computing labs
  • Compute results in secure, high-performance AI development environments