Mayo Clinic’s data platform is redefining how fast care can evolve — and how far high-quality care can reach.
The Rochester, Minn.-based health system launched Mayo Clinic Platform in 2019 to extend its expertise far beyond the patients who visit its own campuses, making its clinical knowledge and data insights available to healthcare organizations around the world.
“We recognize that there are very few patients outside of our immediate geography that can get on a plane or travel to our full destination,” Mayo Clinic Platform COO Maneesh Goyal told Becker’s. “How do we impact the lives of patients that never have to come to Mayo Clinic? That’s the intent behind Mayo Clinic Platform, and we’ve been doing everything we can to figure out how to scale.”
That reach is already significant. While Mayo Clinic directly treated about 1.25 million patients last year, its clinical insights, digital tools and global partnerships touched an estimated 55 million lives — a more than fortyfold increase. Ultimately, the system aims to touch 4 billion lives through Mayo Clinic Platform.
To support this effort, the health system has digitized nearly 100 petabytes of deidentified clinical data over the last five years, covering 8 million patients. One petabyte is equivalent to about 500 billion pages of standard printed text — enough paper to fill 20 million tall filing cabinets.
Recognizing its own patient population represents a narrow fraction of the global population, the health system has partnered with other academic medical centers across the world to develop a more diversified patient data set. Participating centers represent about 40% of the top 10 institutions in Canada, South America, Africa and several parts of Asia.
“Now we’ve got diversified patient data that looks more like humanity versus just Mayo Clinic’s version of humanity,” Mr. Goyal said.
At present, the health system is focused on using its data repository to advance and share not only medical knowledge, but also new technologies with healthcare organizations worldwide. Its overarching goal is to democratize access to medical knowledge and innovative tools so that a 25-bed critical access hospital, an under-resourced health system abroad or a clinician thousands of miles from Minnesota can make care decisions informed by the world’s best data and expertise.
That aim is taking shape through the Mayo Clinic Platform_Insights initiative, launched Nov. 3, which packages the platform’s collective clinical knowledge into tools that integrate directly into hospital workflows.
“It takes three years to go from idea to a pilot project to implementing a new product in healthcare, whether it be clinical decision-making tools or patient monitoring tools, etc.,” Mr. Goyal said. “Our goal is to shrink that.”
To accelerate that timeline, Mayo embeds its insights, algorithms and decision-support capabilities into a “technology container” that sits alongside a partner hospital’s EHR. The system deployed 53 such tools in June. This design allows even small or resource-strained hospitals — some of which may only have a single IT staff member — to deploy advanced clinical tools in weeks or months instead of years, without major technical lift or capital investment.
For example, a neuro-oncology subspecialist at Mayo recently identified survival differences in glioblastoma patients tied to specific anti-epileptic drugs and A1c management — insights that changed Mayo’s own oncology practice overnight. Through Platform_Insights, that same knowledge can reach clinicians in Albuquerque or Nigeria just as quickly, closing the longstanding gap between research and real-world practice.
“That’s how you change outcomes,” Mr. Goyal said.
Editor’s note: This article was updated Nov. 14 at 10:20 a.m. CT to clarify the launch date of Mayo’s digital tools.
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.
