Kari Turkowski, Ph.D., has never been one to shy away from a challenge.
Whether excelling as an elite athlete or dealing with an unexpected medical condition, she has met each new chapter head-on.
Her determination extends to every aspect of her life, including her tireless work for Mayo Clinic Platform. In this role, she is part of a team tackling the transformation of healthcare to benefit patients around the world.
Dr. Turkowski grew up in Richmond, Minnesota, with two athletic brothers and a dad who was a coach, so sports were a natural fit.
She wanted to play hockey in high school even though there were no female players on the team. Undaunted, she became the first. She continued to excel in multiple sports and received an athletic scholarship to St. Cloud State University for volleyball.
Despite being an experienced athlete, in 2008 Dr. Turkowski suddenly began having trouble completing routine workouts. She sought help from several doctors.
No one had answers.
“One day I was walking on a treadmill, and I didn’t feel right,” Dr. Turkowski remembers. “It was like having tunnel vision. My ears were buzzing. My heart went nuts, and I had to get help.”
The next thing Dr. Turkowski remembers is waking up in an ambulance. Her care team ran tests at the hospital, but she went home without answers. She spent the next several weeks worrying and waiting before deciding to go to Mayo Clinic.
At Mayo Clinic, Dr. Turkowski was diagnosed with stage 2 heart failure and ventricular tachycardia, a type of irregular heartbeat caused by scarring on her heart. She would later learn this was likely a result of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle, usually triggered by a viral infection.
As a seasoned team athlete, Dr. Turkowski immediately recognized how teamwork drove her care at Mayo Clinic.
“My care team told me, ‘Let’s do this together. It might be a long journey, but we’re not going to give up on you,’” she recalls. “The experience was in line with everything that I knew would create success. They brought me in as part of the team. That’s huge.”
Determined to have the highest quality of life possible, Dr. Turkowski began treatment with medications and procedures to disrupt the tissue causing the arrythmia. Then life threw her another curve ball. During her second procedure, Dr. Turkowski went into cardiac arrest on the table.
“I didn’t have a pulse,” Dr. Turkowski says. “They had to give me CPR to get my heart started again. After that, my doctor told me it was time to live a recreational life instead of being a competitive athlete. It was time to find something else to fill my cup.”
Dr. Turkowski’s diagnosis forced her to rethink the way she pushes herself physically. But it also motivated her to reevaluate her professional goals, and she credits her patient experience at Mayo Clinic and the organization’s unique approach to collaboration as the inspiration.
Dr. Turkowski left her job as an accountant to pursue her doctorate from Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. After graduation, she spent five years at Mayo Clinic researching genetic heart conditions. During her time in Cardiovascular Medicine, she used artificial intelligence (AI) models to study how data can provide insights into medical conditions.
Then, Dr. Turkowski had an opportunity in 2020 to meet John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., the Dwight and Dian Diercks President, Mayo Clinic Platform, and Michael D. Brennan, M.D., President's Strategic Initiative Professor.
“I knew with my business skills in the accounting world and my science background as a researcher this would be the perfect fit,” she recalls. “I knew I could make a difference here.”
Dr. Turkowski joined Mayo Clinic Platform as a postdoctoral researcher, becoming one of the first eight members. Today, the team has grown to more than 150 with Dr. Turkowski serving as director of Services and Solutions Development.
“I have a personal calling to Mayo Clinic Platform,” says Dr. Turkowski. “My role is to translate solutions so patients can start down a better path sooner. We have to start before the problem happens. That’s how we are going to change healthcare.”
Dr. Turkowski describes Mayo Clinic Platform as an ecosystem, noting that it is not about Mayo Clinic alone but the entire world. It’s a community of data, collective challenges and scalable solutions.
Mayo Clinic Platform teams carefully research and review provider markets, listening to the challenges of physicians and other healthcare providers. Once these needs are identified, Dr. Turkowski and her colleagues turn to the data to determine how AI can be used to optimize clinical workflow and improve patient care.
“The data is what makes Mayo Clinic Platform so powerful,” says Dr. Turkowski. “We are developing our data network with partners from all over the world. And when organizations join, they are bringing their data to this ecosystem. It is the foundation to finding solutions for patients.”
As of November 2024, Mayo Clinic Platform’s distributed data network includes de-identified information from more than 38 million patients from healthcare organizations spanning four continents. These member organizations maintain control of their data, and innovators query it using a privacy-protected process. All data must be structured consistently and stripped of any identifiable information.
For example, one of the projects Dr. Turkowski is currently working on is a practice transformation effort with Mayo Clinic’s gastroenterology team. Videos of endoscopies, minimally invasive procedures to examine the digestive system, are valuable to this group, yet the capability to include videos within the Platform’s dataset does not currently exist. Dr. Turkowski and her team are collaborating with the gastroenterology team to develop a way to make this possible.
“I love being connected to the clinical practice on a daily basis,” she says. “I get to work with amazing innovators at Mayo Clinic and witness their passion for healthcare. Their love for caring for their patients is amazing.”
Dr. Turkowski says she’s grateful to be part of a team that shares her determination to succeed.
“When I was a patient, I saw how Mayo approached care,” says Dr. Turkowski. “True success comes from a solid, dedicated team. I saw it in my research, in my education and in Mayo Clinic Platform. We work together as a team. We are driven. We have a mission, and we have the grit and commitment to transform healthcare in a way that was previously unimaginable.”
Today, years after she lost consciousness on a treadmill, Dr. Turkowski is moving forward at full speed toward a better future in healthcare. “I’m fortunate to be part of this team. And I’m fortunate to be alive. There were times I didn’t know if I was going to wake up,” she says. “I’m sitting here today because Mayo saved my life, and I get to work on something really special. I’m in the right place.”
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