Mayo Clinic Platform Training Supports Innovative, Data-Driven Care

Residents and fellows are learning how to improve care delivery with access to de-identified, large-scale data available through the Mayo Clinic Platform. Trainees from the Clinical Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Academy at the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education had the opportunity to explore the Platform — a resource maintained by the Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic to revamp care delivery and accelerate innovation.

The Mayo Clinic Platform constitutes one of the largest sets of de-identified health care data globally and facilitates collaboration among tech developers, health care providers and researchers. During a CIE Platform Experience Day, trainees learned to leverage it to answer clinical queries, according to the Mayo News Network.

For example, one team utilized the Platform to investigate how frequently patients completed lab work prior to endocrinologist appointments. It allowed them to divide patients into case and control groups who completed labs before and after their appointments. Additionally, trainees compared the quantity of consults for those groups and investigated who referred the patients and why.

Preparing to Deliver Data-Driven Medicine

Overall, the residents and fellows who participated in the immersive training gained experience with association exploration, cohort definition, feasibility checks and the examination of population-level outcomes like hospitalizations. They now have a handle on the Platform’s capabilities, how to use it to answer their questions and the ways in which it can inform their work in clinical settings.

“Participating in this experience significantly reinforced my belief that digital health and data-driven medicine are not simply future concepts, but essential components of modern clinical care,” said Leticia Sandoval, M.D., a participant in the CIE Academy, according to the Mayo News Network. “It highlighted how much high-quality data we already generate — across labs, imaging, genomics and clinical documentation — and how transformative it can be when those data are meaningfully integrated rather than siloed.”

Creating “Superusers” to Drive Innovation

Ultimately, the medical students who explored the Platform can now go on to serve as “superusers” who spearhead innovation and progress in their departments. This aligns with the CIE program’s aim of equipping enrollees to drive meaningful change and act as leaders.

“We don’t want them to be passive occupants of that future health care system,” Lyle K. Jones, Jr., M.D., dean of the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education, said in a video about the training. “We want them to be active architects of that system.”