Mayo Clinic Health System (community branch of Mayo Clinic) added 2,500 team members systemwide last year and has big growth plans ahead.
During an interview for the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast," Prathibha Varkey, MBBS, said the health system has two big goals for the year: first, leading transformation with digital technologies and artificial intelligence; second, improving the patient experience.
Under the leadership of CEO Dr. Gianrico Farrugia, Mayo Clinic launched its center for digital health and Mayo Clinic Platform ahead of the pandemic to accelerate digital transformation. Mayo Clinic promotes innovation from within and currently has more than 300 staff-led AI projects in various stages of maturity.
"There's no question this is going to transform healthcare as we know it by creating new ways to diagnose, prevent and cure disease," said Dr. Varkey. "Through automation, we believe there are multiple opportunities to reduce administrative burden and provide more timely, dynamic, intelligent and proactive data analytics to help us streamline processes as well as automate, diagnose and detect previously undiagnosed illnesses."
But advancing AI doesn't happen in a vacuum. Dr. Varkey said her team is focused on innovating with empathy and providing continued focus on values across the health system in alignment with Mayo Clinic's strategic priorities, including the patient experience.
"Our primary value at Mayo Clinic has always been that the needs of patients come first, and we've been very fortunate to have an integrated practice and staff that operate very seamlessly while keeping patients in the center of all we do," said Dr. Varkey. "As we've integrated the physical and AI technologies to current workflows, what else can we do to further improve and reimagine that care, including providing enhanced access to patients where they need it, how they need it, and triaging acute and complex patients more accurately? What additional care can be seen as we provide it at home? How can we maximize the talent of our care teams while automating clinical tasks? Those are the areas we're doubling down on in 2025."
Dr. Varkey is working with her teams to reach more patients and develop new methods for preventing, diagnosing and treating patients with the science of AI. The system is now selecting and matching patients with the most promising clinical trials and conducting decentralized trials to incorporate rural communities into the studies alongside patients at the academic centers. They're also developing and deploying remote health monitoring devices and imaging technology to anticipate diseases ahead of symptoms.
"At Mayo Clinic Health System, we are helping primary care providers to detect congestive cardiac failure early using EKGs through AI developed algorithms developed by Mayo Clinic's Rochester team," said Dr. Varkey. "It's just amazing, the bandwidth that AI and automation creates in enhancing evidence-based care to patients in a much more expansive and transformative fashion than has occurred in the past."