Mayo Clinic Launches Solution Studio to Help Digital Health Companies

As per Mayo Clinic, Solutions Studio aims to address these challenges by serving as a pipeline for proven technologies to reach hospital buyers.

Mayo Clinic Platform has unveiled its latest endeavor, Solutions Studio, at HIMSS24, a program aimed at expediting the development, validation, and implementation of digital health systems.

The initiative seeks to alleviate the roadblocks encountered by digital health companies in commercializing their products and integrating them into healthcare workflows, ultimately streamlining their adoption across hospitals and health systems.

With Solutions Studio, Mayo Clinic Platform aims to make digital health innovation and adoption more efficient and accessible by providing access to global, federated de-identified data and facilitating seamless integration into clinical workflows, it said in a statement.

Dr John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, emphasized the importance of following best practices in testing, deploying, and evaluating AI solutions, highlighting the rigorous qualification process developed to ensure the fairness, appropriateness, validity, and effectiveness of digital health solutions.

"For Solutions Studio, Mayo Clinic Platform developed a rigorous, proprietary qualification process to evaluate digital health solutions and ensure they are fair, appropriate, valid and effective," he said.

Steve Bethke, vice president of product portfolio at Mayo Clinic Platform, underscored the program's role in accelerating the development and implementation of digital health solutions.

"Solutions Studio will accelerate the rate at which these solutions can be developed and implemented, enabling better patient outcomes, higher operational efficiencies and a lower cost of care," Bethke said.

How Solution Studio Aims to Connect Digital Health Companies to Provider Systems?

Digital health companies often find it difficult to sell their solutions to hospitals. They face challenges including lengthy sales cycles, implementation processes, and high development costs.

As per Mayo Clinic, Solutions Studio aims to address these challenges by serving as a pipeline for proven technologies to reach hospital buyers and providing participating companies with access to standardized data, analytic tools, and its expertise.

Dr Sonya Makhni, medical director of solutions for Mayo Clinic Platform, highlighted the importance of responsible AI use in healthcare and highlighted how guiding principles established by the Coalition for Health AI underpin Solutions Studio.

Makhni emphasized the program's role in enabling innovators to bring qualified solutions to market quickly while ensuring providers have access to trustworthy solutions.

Mayo will charge a fee from Digital Health companies and in return, Solutions Studio will give participating companies access to a pool of de-identified, standardized data to test and train their models against, along with a library of analytic and training tools, the statement said.

Moreover, companies can have Mayo inspect their model’s performance and their solution be “qualified” after a review by Mayo doctors and data scientists.

As per the statement, Mayo will also help companies weave their tools into electronic health records.

Shift from Hospital to Care Provider

Mayo Clinic's broader digital strategy, showcased at HIMSS24, involved investing in new digital capabilities to transform both physical and digital healthcare environments.

The project, in works since 2020, encompasses a long-term master plan aimed at enhancing patient experiences, improving operational efficiency by having a multi-year timeline for digital experience investment.

The plan also includes infra development with a total 2.4 million new square feet of construction, with two buildings dedicated to supporting ongoing enhancements in clinical care.

It also aims to build one new facility by 2028, and five fully operational buildings by 2030.

Heidi Shedenhelm, Nurse Administrator at Mayo Clinic, emphasized the transformative impact of these investments, both internally and externally.

She said, "We don't even talk about it being a hospital anymore, but a place where we'll provide care and that will allow patients to experience that holistic care at every stage in their journey."

Adam Copeland, director of digital strategy at Mayo Clinic, underscored the importance of human experiences in driving digital transformation via examples of technology-enabled initiatives including robotic assistance, personalized music therapy, and enhanced systems integration.