Mayo Clinic Ventures president talks data analytics, innovation

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Let’s talk about these issues. Which areas do you think are most ripe for innovation, coming from provider-led initiatives?

I think all of us are aware of the cost issue we have in the United States with health care.

If you look at other industries, the electronics industry is the prime example, when we’ve applied analytics and data and technology, we’ve seen a big increase in functionality and consumer performance. And we’ve seen a big decrease in costs.

We’re looking into digital health analytics and using data to not just do better for patients in diagnosing and treating disease, but to do it in a way that substantially reduces costs.

[The other regards AI.] What we don’t want to do, especially with the promise of AI, is have biases or products that don’t work [some] segments of the population. So, we’ve been very intentional and specific in recruiting minority patients so that when we develop those AI algorithms, they’re broad spectrum in terms of their ability to help patients.

How difficult is it to find employees in this area of ​​the industry?

There is [never] enough talent for what you want to do. When you look at why things are successful, the main reason is almost always people.

You may have all the capital, the best ideas, the intellectual property and the technology, but if you don’t have the right people to lead that company or project, it won’t succeed. Conversely, if you have the right people, they will often find the money, find the technology – or create it – and be successful.

Hiring good people remains a challenge. You can find them, but very, very talented people are always in short supply.

Could you shed some light on some of the companies in your portfolio?

It’s always nice to thank the people we’ve worked with.

Medically Home would be one, [with which] we’ve made a big push on how we can deliver high-severity care in a patient’s home. Many of us have had to spend time in the hospital. Not a fun place to stay.

Another is nference, a data analytics company. He worked with us to take all 6 million of our longitudinal and independently electronic health records, certifiably anonymize them, aggregate them, put them into our Google Cloud environment, and allow our researchers to access that data to do good things, make new discoveries, advancing healthcare, but also opening up that data in a very controlled way to outside groups who want to develop products and services. The data never leaves Mayo’s cloud, so it’s locked down, anonymized, and we monitor what companies are doing.

But we feel this is how we all individually can give back. How many smart people we have here in Mayo, we still have a small fraction of them [them]. So we opened [those data] through reference to other companies to do product development.

And then the last one I’d like to mention is a company called Anumana, which is doing remote diagnostics. It’s pulling EKG waveforms from the heart — they can come from a device worn on the body or from a smartwatch. Humans can’t interpret very subtle changes in those waveforms, but artificial intelligence can. Can often [detect] asymptomatic disease [from them]. People walk around and could progress to, say, heart failure. Out of their smartwatch and this ECG signal, they can be alerted and can go to the doctor and undergo therapy to prevent [disease] progression. So we’re pretty excited about that.

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