Artificial Intelligence > The Power and Precision of Automation

The Power and Precision of Automation

By Christine Tully Photography by Paul Flessland Illustration by Jerry-Lee Bosmans

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Formula One racing and healthcare innovation have a lot in common.

Just as Formula One racing teams rely on advanced technology, strong teamwork and meticulous precision, so does Mayo Clinic’s automation strategy.

Anjali Bhagra, M.D., M.B.A., who leads Mayo Clinic’s automation efforts and became a Formula One racing fan thanks to her youngest son, finds parallels between the two. Both have a shared need for high-performance solutions, which require a robust foundational infrastructure.

"In racing, Ferraris cannot succeed if there is no infrastructure,” she says. "It’s the same with healthcare — we must build the roads, and building those is the hard work. Not only is Mayo Clinic building the roads, but the organization is also bringing the Ferraris.”

Dr. Bhagra’s experience watching competitive athletes has instilled in her an appreciation for the dedication, precision and collaborative spirit required to achieve peak performance.

This same mindset is crucial to Mayo Clinic’s work in automation. Mayo Clinic is creating a blueprint for healthcare’s automated future — one that enhances rather than replaces human care, improving outcomes for both patients and healthcare workers.

The Year of Automation

Dr. Bhagra’s interest in automation stems from a personal and professional journey that spans decades of innovation in healthcare.

Her early work in radiology exposed her to the challenges of interpreting massive volumes of imaging data — an experience that highlighted the need for intelligent tools to support clinical decision-making. She began integrating point-of-care technology at the bedside to better assess patients nearly 20 years ago.

"We have all these capabilities,” she says, “but we don’t have the processes in place to put them in the hands of people taking care of patients.”

That’s when, in mid-2023, Mayo Clinic leaders declared 2024 as the “Year of Automation.” Partners from all over the organization came together to strategize how to bring this vision to life with a focus to transform the future of healthcare delivery. They began by establishing four core outcomes to guide their efforts: enhancing patient care and outcomes; improving staff experience and burden reduction; improving operational efficiency and cost reduction; and empowering innovation and engagement.

As part of this effort, leaders identified key areas as testing grounds for pilots, scalable initiatives and transformative innovations.

One initiative is the Virtual Nursing (ViRN) program, an inpatient model for virtual nursing that uses automation to improve various aspects of patient care, including admissions, bedside care and discharge. ViRN resources were integrated into daily operations, drastically reducing manual data entry and alleviating multitasking demands that previously contributed to nurse burnout and turnover.

This initiative improved staff efficiency and morale, enhanced patient safety and care quality, and eased the burden on nurses.

“It’s about letting our staff focus on what matters most — caring for our patients,” Dr. Bhagra says.

Among the more than 100 initiatives that have been implemented across the organization in the past year, Dr. Bhagra is most proud of a project to enhance access for international patients, a group that often faces significant barriers to care.

The intake process for international patients was slow due to its complexity and the diversity of patient backgrounds, languages and medical documentation formats. To address this, Mayo Clinic assembled a multidisciplinary team whose goal was to streamline intake, triage and care coordination using automation and process mining, a data analysis technique used to optimize business processes.

The team focused not only on bringing patients in faster, but also on ensuring they move through the right areas of Mayo Clinic at the right pace to receive the most appropriate care. This includes automating decision trees, language translation and routing mechanisms to reduce delays and improve the patient experience.

“These tools are really bringing that intelligence that humans need to be able to take care of patients better, and that fundamentally is my driver,” says Dr. Bhagra.

Restoring Human Touch

One might think of automation as factory lines or robots replacing humans. But healthcare automation today is far more nuanced — it’s less about replacement and more about augmenting human capabilities, handling repetitive tasks, and freeing people to focus on creative problem-solving and strategic work. In healthcare, it becomes more about the patient.

Healthcare tasks are highly amenable to automation, and thoughtful implementation of automation and AI can significantly enhance human connection with patients.

“I think there is an automation paradox,” Dr. Bhagra says. “Automation and AI — when done right — will bring humanity back in the healthcare experience.”

Many healthcare professionals spend excessive time on administrative tasks such as data entry, ordering and recordkeeping, diverting their attention from patient interaction. Mayo Clinic clinicians have adopted AI-powered ambient listening technology that automatically captures and summarizes patient discussions, freeing them from note-taking tasks that previously disrupted personal interactions.

“If I have automation and AI working in the background, I can offer my real empathy and compassion,” Dr. Bhagra says. “I don’t have to have my mind in two places at the same time — one with the machine and one with my patients.”

By strategically integrating automation, Mayo Clinic is creating a more efficient and compassionate healthcare system, ensuring the human touch remains central to patient care.

The Future of Automation

While the future of automation is bright, Dr. Bhagra, who also leads Mayo Clinic’s Office of Belonging, stresses the importance of fairness, ethics and accountability in developing and deploying automation strategies.

Mayo Clinic’s culture of belonging and innovation distinguishes it from profit-driven organizations. This ethos underpins the commitment to creating safe, effective and equitable healthcare.

It’s a perspective appreciated by her administrative partner, Biju Samkutty, who is chief operating officer of Mayo Clinic’s enterprise automation efforts.

“Dr. Bhagra’s commitment to advancing what’s best for patients is truly inspiring,” Biju says. “She brings both strategic vision and a relentless drive to ensure that innovation translates into real-world impact.”

And with Dr. Bhagra in the driver’s seat, so to speak, Mayo Clinic’s efforts to use automation to drive more humanity into healthcare are well on their way.

“To reach the championship podium, integrating automation takes all of us at Mayo Clinic working together to meet the needs of the patient,” she says. “We’re on the right track.”