[{"innerBlocks":[],"name":"core\/freeform","postId":225,"blockType":{"name":"core\/freeform","keywords":[],"attributes":{"content":{"type":"string","source":"raw"},"lock":{"type":"object"}},"providesContext":[],"usesContext":[],"selectors":[],"supports":{"className":false,"customClassName":false,"reusable":false},"styles":[],"variations":[],"apiVersion":3,"title":"Classic","description":"Use the classic WordPress editor.","category":"text"},"originalContent":"The Mayo Clinic has an opportunity to \u201cdefine a digital health platform for the planet,\u201d contends John Halamka, MD, who will spearhead efforts to scale the provider\u2019s capabilities worldwide.On Tuesday, the Mayo Clinic announced that Halamka\u2014who most recently served as executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center for Beth Israel Lahey Health\u2014will be joining the Rochester, Minn.-based healthcare organization on January 1.\u201cAs president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, I lead a portfolio of new digital platform businesses focused on transforming health by leveraging artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and an ecosystem of partners for Mayo Clinic,\u201d Halamka wrote in a blog<\/a> on Wednesday.The platform is an initiative of Gianrico Farrugia, MD\u2014the Mayo Clinic\u2019s new president and CEO\u2014who is co-author of Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast: A Blueprint for Transformation From the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation<\/i>, which lays out the need for change in healthcare delivery.\u201cFarrugia worked with all the stakeholders at Mayo to develop a 2030 plan to transform the entire leading-edge organization into a digitally enabled place,\u201d Halamka said in an interview with Health Data Management<\/i>. \u201cThe idea behind the Mayo Clinic Platform is to accelerate this transformation by fostering collaboration and harnessing apps and services that ride on that platform.\u201dHalamka says his nearly 25 years in Boston\u2014including more than 20 years as chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center\u2014is a \u201cvery good fit\u201d for leading the Mayo Clinic Platform with collaborators across the globe.\u201cMayo\u2019s vision is to now make it easy to do things like healthcare in the home, digital diagnostics and clinical decision support to very large scale,\u201d says Halamka. \u201cI look at it as taking Boston lessons learned and now sharing them with a much broader audience.\u201dWriting in his blog on Wednesday, Halamka said he sees the Mayo Clinic Platform as an \u201cinnovation factory\u201d for collaboration\u2014leveraging technology, policies and people\u2014to radically shorten the time to evaluate emerging companies.\u201cAs an adviser to many startups, incubators and accelerators around the world, I've experienced the barriers and enablers to innovation,\u201d writes Halamka. \u201cLaunching a pilot can take 6 months just to work through approval processes. Sometimes, academic medical centers can take as long as 18 months to formalize a proof of concept project.\u201dAccording to Halamka, the Mayo Clinic\u2019s goal is to deliver high-quality care to as many people as possible without necessarily adding facilities and increasing its staff.\u201cIf the digital platform is successful, when you ask what is the address of the Mayo Clinic\u2014the answer is it\u2019s in your phone in your hand,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is to say that you can access the care, professionals and knowledge you need digitally. Some of the visits, of course, will still be in person. But much of it will be available virtually. Healthcare over the next 10 years is not about bricks and mortar. It\u2019s about the delivery of digital services that meet the patients where they are.\u201dWhile Halamka does not start his new position at Mayo until January 1, he is taking personal time off this month to volunteer at the main campus in Rochester to meet \u201cstakeholders at every level of the organization\u201d and \u201clisten to their hopes and needs for Mayo Clinic Platform projects.\u201dAlthough there are many potential projects that will be considered, Halamka says the Mayo Clinic Platform will initially focus on three efforts\u2014healthcare in the home, advanced digital diagnostics and clinical data analytics.\u201cThere will be many more projects, but we have to approach this with humility because you can\u2019t boil the ocean,\u201d he remarks. \u201cThere are a lot of unknowns here, and we\u2019re going to have to start with a couple of projects, see what works, build on them and expand as we find success.\u201dWhen it comes to developing digital diagnostics based on patient-generated data from wearable technology, Halamka observes that \u201cthe challenge is we\u2019re all generating this new telemetry but we\u2019re not turning that data into wisdom.\u201d However, he contends that the Mayo Clinic\u2014working with third-party collaborators\u2014can develop algorithms to detect when patients are having an arrhythmia or are at risk for a cardiac event.\u201cThat would be a whole lot better use of all this telemetry than just gathering it in your smartphone as a data silo,\u201d he adds.Halamka notes that Google Cloud and Mayo Clinic recently announced a partnership to improve patient outcomes and deliver digital health innovation at a global scale. In addition to building its data platform on Google Cloud, Mayo is teaming with Google to create machine learning models for serious and complex diseases that will ultimately be shared with caregivers worldwide to improve healthcare delivery.\u201cThe idea behind the (Google-Mayo) partnership is to create a data platform that is in some ways vendor neutral,\u201d according to Halamka. \u201cEpic is a transactional system there (at Mayo) that is very rich and has a lot of data. But you\u2019re going to have to combine that data with social determinants of health, wearables, geo-location and outbreak data in communities\u2014lots of different kinds of data.\u201d Halamka says he thinks of the platform as being a \u201cvendor-agnostic mechanism to gather and integrate data in novel ways,\u201d adding that \u201cEpic will be a very important part of it, but just one part.\u201d Next month, Halamka will start living in an apartment in Rochester four days per week, commuting between Massachusetts and Minnesota. \u201cThe flights are easy (2.5 to three hours, three times per day on Jet Blue), and even with weekly commuting, I may actually travel less in 2020 than in 2019 (400,000 miles in 40 countries).\u201dAsked why he decided to commute rather than move to Minnesota, Halamka replies that he can\u2019t \u201cabandon his 250 children\u201d\u2014a reference to the Unity Farm Sanctuary in Sherborn, Mass., founded in late 2016 by him and his wife Kathy, where he will continue to provide weekend care and maintenance for rescued farm animals.","saveContent":"The Mayo Clinic has an opportunity to \u201cdefine a digital health platform for the planet,\u201d contends John Halamka, MD, who will spearhead efforts to scale the provider\u2019s capabilities worldwide.On Tuesday, the Mayo Clinic announced that Halamka\u2014who most recently served as executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center for Beth Israel Lahey Health\u2014will be joining the Rochester, Minn.-based healthcare organization on January 1.\u201cAs president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, I lead a portfolio of new digital platform businesses focused on transforming health by leveraging artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and an ecosystem of partners for Mayo Clinic,\u201d Halamka wrote in a blog<\/a> on Wednesday.The platform is an initiative of Gianrico Farrugia, MD\u2014the Mayo Clinic\u2019s new president and CEO\u2014who is co-author of Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast: A Blueprint for Transformation From the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation<\/i>, which lays out the need for change in healthcare delivery.\u201cFarrugia worked with all the stakeholders at Mayo to develop a 2030 plan to transform the entire leading-edge organization into a digitally enabled place,\u201d Halamka said in an interview with Health Data Management<\/i>. \u201cThe idea behind the Mayo Clinic Platform is to accelerate this transformation by fostering collaboration and harnessing apps and services that ride on that platform.\u201dHalamka says his nearly 25 years in Boston\u2014including more than 20 years as chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center\u2014is a \u201cvery good fit\u201d for leading the Mayo Clinic Platform with collaborators across the globe.\u201cMayo\u2019s vision is to now make it easy to do things like healthcare in the home, digital diagnostics and clinical decision support to very large scale,\u201d says Halamka. \u201cI look at it as taking Boston lessons learned and now sharing them with a much broader audience.\u201dWriting in his blog on Wednesday, Halamka said he sees the Mayo Clinic Platform as an \u201cinnovation factory\u201d for collaboration\u2014leveraging technology, policies and people\u2014to radically shorten the time to evaluate emerging companies.\u201cAs an adviser to many startups, incubators and accelerators around the world, I've experienced the barriers and enablers to innovation,\u201d writes Halamka. \u201cLaunching a pilot can take 6 months just to work through approval processes. Sometimes, academic medical centers can take as long as 18 months to formalize a proof of concept project.\u201dAccording to Halamka, the Mayo Clinic\u2019s goal is to deliver high-quality care to as many people as possible without necessarily adding facilities and increasing its staff.\u201cIf the digital platform is successful, when you ask what is the address of the Mayo Clinic\u2014the answer is it\u2019s in your phone in your hand,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is to say that you can access the care, professionals and knowledge you need digitally. Some of the visits, of course, will still be in person. But much of it will be available virtually. Healthcare over the next 10 years is not about bricks and mortar. It\u2019s about the delivery of digital services that meet the patients where they are.\u201dWhile Halamka does not start his new position at Mayo until January 1, he is taking personal time off this month to volunteer at the main campus in Rochester to meet \u201cstakeholders at every level of the organization\u201d and \u201clisten to their hopes and needs for Mayo Clinic Platform projects.\u201dAlthough there are many potential projects that will be considered, Halamka says the Mayo Clinic Platform will initially focus on three efforts\u2014healthcare in the home, advanced digital diagnostics and clinical data analytics.\u201cThere will be many more projects, but we have to approach this with humility because you can\u2019t boil the ocean,\u201d he remarks. \u201cThere are a lot of unknowns here, and we\u2019re going to have to start with a couple of projects, see what works, build on them and expand as we find success.\u201dWhen it comes to developing digital diagnostics based on patient-generated data from wearable technology, Halamka observes that \u201cthe challenge is we\u2019re all generating this new telemetry but we\u2019re not turning that data into wisdom.\u201d However, he contends that the Mayo Clinic\u2014working with third-party collaborators\u2014can develop algorithms to detect when patients are having an arrhythmia or are at risk for a cardiac event.\u201cThat would be a whole lot better use of all this telemetry than just gathering it in your smartphone as a data silo,\u201d he adds.Halamka notes that Google Cloud and Mayo Clinic recently announced a partnership to improve patient outcomes and deliver digital health innovation at a global scale. In addition to building its data platform on Google Cloud, Mayo is teaming with Google to create machine learning models for serious and complex diseases that will ultimately be shared with caregivers worldwide to improve healthcare delivery.\u201cThe idea behind the (Google-Mayo) partnership is to create a data platform that is in some ways vendor neutral,\u201d according to Halamka. \u201cEpic is a transactional system there (at Mayo) that is very rich and has a lot of data. But you\u2019re going to have to combine that data with social determinants of health, wearables, geo-location and outbreak data in communities\u2014lots of different kinds of data.\u201d Halamka says he thinks of the platform as being a \u201cvendor-agnostic mechanism to gather and integrate data in novel ways,\u201d adding that \u201cEpic will be a very important part of it, but just one part.\u201d Next month, Halamka will start living in an apartment in Rochester four days per week, commuting between Massachusetts and Minnesota. \u201cThe flights are easy (2.5 to three hours, three times per day on Jet Blue), and even with weekly commuting, I may actually travel less in 2020 than in 2019 (400,000 miles in 40 countries).\u201dAsked why he decided to commute rather than move to Minnesota, Halamka replies that he can\u2019t \u201cabandon his 250 children\u201d\u2014a reference to the Unity Farm Sanctuary in Sherborn, Mass., founded in late 2016 by him and his wife Kathy, where he will continue to provide weekend care and maintenance for rescued farm animals.","order":0,"get_parent":{},"attributes":[],"attributesType":{"content":{"type":"string","source":"raw"},"lock":{"type":"object"}},"dynamicContent":""}]

Halamka looks to scale digital health globally for Mayo Clinic

More for you