The future according to Mayo Clinic: How AI is transforming the hospital

AI has the potential to reshape how modern hospitals function, from streamlining operational workflows to elevating patient care. However, the adoption threshold for new AI solutions in healthcare is very high: Patient safety concerns, stringent privacy rules, squeezed budgets for hospitals, and complex value propositions for improving patient care can all slow down adoption.

Nevertheless, AI activity from Mayo Clinic — which has a reputation for tech innovation, a frontline understanding of healthcare’s complexities, and deep pockets — can serve as a bellwether for AI traction, indicating which tools are more likely to play key roles in the hospital of the future. 

Mayo Clinic (which was ranked No. 1 in our Hospital AI Readiness Index) is also forging partnerships to provide other health systems with guidance on AI strategy and implementation — indicating that where Mayo goes, others will follow.

We dug into Mayo Clinic’s AI investment activity since 2023 to see how AI is shaping the hospitals of the future and identify the AI use cases and solutions that should be on healthcare strategists’ radars.

Here are 4 key takeaways from our analysis:

• Mayo Clinic is betting on AI’s staying power and long-term potential in healthcare, with AI startups dominating its early-stage investment portfolio.
• The health system is racing toward more predictive care — which would save costs on treating diseases while improving patient outcomes — backing more deals to monitoring and diagnostics than any other AI category.
• Robots are poised to expand their reach in hospitals, inside and outside of the operating room. Mayo is backing microrobotics for gastrointestinal scans and drug delivery, as well as LLM-driven collaborative robots for operational tasks — saving on staffing costs and opening up new healthcare options for patients.

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