How Mayo Clinic’s Data Liquidity Strategy Succeeded Despite COVID-19

Mayo Clinic began exploring use cases for artificial intelligence in 2017. An internal work group identified more than 200 activities using AI or machine learning (ML) technology for patient care, research and innovation. That kickstarted a process of building IT infrastructure to organize the healthcare system’s 150 years’ worth of data, and it culminated in signing a 10-year partnership agreement with Google Cloud in September 2019.

Six months later, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread across the U.S., this effort to increase access to data across the organization was paying dividends, according to James Buntrock, Mayo Clinic’s vice chair of IT. “We couldn’t have predicted what would have transpired. We definitely needed data liquidity,” Buntrock said during a webinar sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Learning Center.