I have said that “data + people = new knowledge,” and “new knowledge = more cures.” AI is now the exponent in these equations. It compounds the impact of data and people by helping us see signals earlier, validate them faster and move discoveries into practice at greater speed. But this can only happen when the foundation is the right one. Healthcare data must be ingested, enriched, vectorized, governed and connected on a platform. Only then can we use AI at scale to move from observation to insight, from insight to trial, and from trial to more cures for patients. 

At Mayo Clinic, this is the purpose of Mayo Clinic Platform, which now includes 54 million de-identified patient lives across four continents. The goal is to help researchers and solution developers find signals across real-world clinical experience and test those insights quickly. Having the right data architecture on the right platform safely available to humans and agents is showing results. 

One of the clearest examples is clinical trials, essential to developing more cures. A modern data architecture can make clinical trials faster, smarter and more targeted. For example, using Platform data, Joseph C. Ahn, M.D., and his team have simulated disease progression in alcohol-associated hepatitis against 10,000 synthetic patients and 1,400 actual patients, with nearly identical survival patterns. In another example, Cui Tao, Ph.D., and Nansu Zong, Ph.D., and their team fully emulated a randomized trial comparing warfarin and aspirin using Platform observational data. Preparing and validating the dataset took months, compared with 12 years for the original trial. Trial design, end points and statistical power should be highly informed by AI run on a modern platform data architecture before most, if not all, large clinical trials are initiated. 

Every data point in healthcare should serve one purpose: improving outcomes and developing more cures for patients.

— Gianrico Farrugia, M.D.

Within orthopedic surgery, Matthew P. Abdel, M.D., and his team leveraged Platform clinical data to help predict surgical site infections before total knee replacement surgery. They built a virtual patient cohort and generated a synthetic control arm to develop an AI-driven predictive model that could identify high-risk patients before surgery and enable the care team to intervene early. 

A similar approach is changing research for brain tumors. Our chair of Neurosurgery in Rochester and chief medical officer for Mayo Clinic Platform, Gelareh Zadeh, M.D., Ph.D., had previously spent five years building a cohort of a few thousand patients with brain tumors. Using Platform, the team could immediately begin working with a population approaching 4,000 patients with glioblastomas and 5,000 patients with meningiomas, with an average of 16 years of longitudinal data per patient, as well as 5 million clinical notes, 15,000 MRIs and thousands of structured data points.  

This scale and depth of data create opportunities to uncover patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. For example, Dr. Zadeh’s lab is studying whether blood sugar levels and seizure medications are linked to better outcomes for brain tumor patients. Early analyses suggest that controlling glucose levels may help patients with brain cancer and possibly other cancers, and they also suggest that certain seizure medications — such as lamotrigine and levetiracetam — may be associated with longer survival in patients with malignant brain tumors. These findings are strong enough to influence patient care decisions and have led to two clinical trials. 

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We also need to link molecular biology to patient outcomes, and that is the purpose of our Bioresource and Research Data Atlas initiatives. Bioresource collects samples like blood, plasma and tissue and connects them to detailed patient information. Currently, more than 6.6 million samples from more than 219,000 patients have been brought together into one centralized digital system. Our Research Data Atlas then brings all this information together — biospecimens, patient data, lab results, imaging and more — into one place so researchers can work across genomics, spatial biology and cellular imaging in one environment. 

These are just a few examples that demonstrate why rearchitecting healthcare data should be a global imperative requiring investments at a national level. It is one of the most important steps we can take to accelerate cures. AI is the exponent, but our data architecture is the base — and now we must remake it for a new era of inquiry. 

This article was originally published on LinkedIn on June 30, 2026. 

The post Rearchitecting Healthcare Data for More Cures appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The Grainger Building will make those moments better. Scheduled to open in Rochester in 2028, the new support services and logistics center is a critical facet of Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, Mayo Clinic’s vision for the future of care through a transformed downtown campus.

Automation supports care teams by working alongside them — guiding robotic supply delivery and helping create more efficient care environments.

Thomas and Elizabeth Grainger, recognized as Philanthropic Partners, understand the power of operational excellence. Their family’s industrial supply company, W. W. Grainger, was built on the principle that getting the right resources to the right place at the right time can transform how people work.

“Where transformation truly occurs is in the confidence of Mayo Clinic physicians and staff,” Tom says. “When they can trust that the supply chain is accurate, reliable and always available, it becomes second nature. That confidence allows care teams to focus fully on what matters most — making the most efficient diagnoses and delivering the most effective treatments.”

The Grainger Building will enable the complex systems and services that support patient care and anticipate needs throughout a digitally connected downtown campus. Beneath its floors and behind its walls, autonomous robots will support staff and enhance the patient experience by delivering linens, instruments and essential supplies. Using a 900-foot tunnel to the main clinical buildings, the Grainger Building will proactively meet supply needs and ensure clinicians can focus on their patients.

“All of this happens behind the scenes,” says Stephen Fischer, administrator for Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester. “Patients don’t see it, but it’s a carefully orchestrated network of services supporting their care. It’s enhancing both the patient and staff experience and freeing up people for more human connections.”

In essence, the Grainger Building will become another member of the team by elevating support for caregivers, reducing physical burdens on staff, streamlining tasks and enabling clinicians to focus their expertise where it matters most: their patients.

SMART SUPPLY IN ACTION

Smart supply systems are designed to make supply delivery seamless and less disruptive to patient care. Built on real-time, connected digital infrastructure, predictive delivery relies on data, usage patterns and automation to ensure medications, equipment and other supplies are automatically replenished when and where they are needed.

These systems are already being validated through promising pilot programs at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. In the future, the Grainger Building will enable these innovations to scale — connecting supply systems, robotics and centralized logistics to deliver supplies more efficiently across campus. By improving visibility into inventory and aligning supply with actual demand, these systems also reduce excess stock, expired items and avoidable waste. Smart supply systems add an intelligent layer that makes items easier to find and keeps them stocked automatically. For nurses and other providers, this technology represents a meaningful shift from tracking down and restocking supplies to spending time and energy on patient care.

"The goal of this program is to decrease the amount of time that nurses and other direct clinical care staff spend looking for supplies so they can do more of what they love — taking care of patients,” said Heidi Shedenhelm, D.N.P., R.N., administrator for nursing practice transformation. “The nursing staff are finding that these new systems are really adding value and getting them back to their patients faster.”

STEP 1

SUPPLIES ARE STOCKED AND READY

Supplies are currently delivered through multiple established support services workflows and stocked into labeled bins on each floor. In the future, bulk supplies will be staged and stored at the Grainger Building and delivered predictively through the autonomous mobile robotics system to keep local inventory lean while maintaining quick access at the point of care.

STEP 2

THE BUILDING ANTICIPATES NEEDS

When care team members enter a smart supply room, technology and intuitive design help them quickly find the supplies they need. Inventory is automatically tracked and restocked using connected systems that monitor supply use and anticipate future demand.

STEP 3

AMBIENT LISTENING IDENTIFIES THE SUPPLY

The smart supply system uses ambient listening technology — similar to a voice assistant — to identify the correct supply, even when different staff use different terms.

STEP 4

THE CORRECT BIN ILLUMINATES

A small electronic label on the appropriate bin flashes, directing the provider to the right item without searching.

STEP 5

CARE TEAM MEMBERS TAKE SINGLE ITEMS OR FULL KITS

Care team members can request individual supplies or predefined kits, allowing multiple bins to light up at once so everything needed for a task can be gathered quickly.

STEP 6

DESIGNED FOR FUTURE INTEGRATION

This system is being designed to help inform future predictive supply delivery, creating a foundation for integration with robotics and the Grainger Building while aligning with broader planning across Florida and Arizona campuses.

The post Intelligent Systems, Extraordinary Care appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The System Never Sleeps

Eric Klee, Ph.D., applied to medical school and subsequently pulled his application.

What made all the sense in the world for young Eric to do with his life made none in his own mind. His father was a Mayo Clinic pathologist and his mother a nurse. His siblings were all in the process of becoming clinicians themselves.

For an institution built more than 160 years ago by a family of medical practitioners, the Klees were as close to a modern story of the Mayo family as one could get.

"I was born and raised in Rochester, Minnesota,” Dr. Klee says. “I was surrounded by medicine.”

Dr. Klee was very interested in healing patients, but he didn’t want to study biology as an undergraduate followed by years of medical school.

"I knew once I got into medical school, I’d be doing residency and locked into a long-term career,” Dr. Klee says. “That’s why I pulled my application.”

His quest to find a career led him in the late 1990s to the office of Franklyn Prendergast, M.D., Ph.D., a friend of his father, searching like so many others did for some advice from the visionary clinician.

The conversation with Dr. Prendergast, who passed away in 2023, would chart Dr. Klee’s direction and set the stage for the future.

“I was interested in engineering and technology. I was interested in medicine. I wanted to figure out how it all came together,” Dr. Klee recalls. “Dr. Prendergast said, ‘Eric, there’s an emerging field called bioinformatics. It doesn’t actually exist yet, but I promise you it will in five years, and it’ll be important for at least 30 years to come.’”

Today, Dr. Klee, who first graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, has found his answer to what it means to practice medicine as an engineer. And it’s transforming how Mayo Clinic cares for patients with the rarest diseases.

BUILDING BEHIND THE SCENES

Dr. Klee, who is recognized as the Everett J. and Jane M. Hauck Midwest Associate Director, Research and Innovation, Center for Individualized Medicine, has spent his career building systems that aid doctors in new ways. As a leader in Mayo Clinic’s rare disease research and digital innovation efforts, he and his teams have created platforms that keep diagnosing patients years after their genetic sequencing tests. These platforms automatically watch for new scientific discoveries while families sleep, multiplying the impact of the organization’s expertise far beyond exam rooms.

His work represents a distinctive Mayo Clinic approach. It’s focused on cross-disciplinary collaboration where mindsets like his in engineering meet clinical needs. Infrastructure investments from a decade ago enable today’s artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs, and through it all, the institution’s commitment to patients extends even when they’re not physically present.

I was interested in engineering and technology. I was interested in medicine. I wanted to figure out how it all came together.

— ERIC KLEE, PH.D.

From increasing diagnostic success rates for rare diseases to being at the forefront of AI initiatives in the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, Dr. Klee has found his own path to honoring the family calling — one that feeds his soul in ways a traditional practice would not have.

Choosing to study engineering led to an opportunity with the medical device maker Medtronic before going back to graduate school. After obtaining his doctorate degree, the pull of Mayo Clinic brought him back to Rochester, where he would practice medicine in a different way through systems and infrastructure.

None of this was more apparent than in the rare disease space, where finding answers requires something far beyond traditional clinical care — even at a place steeped in subspecialty expertise.

THE RARE DISEASE PARADOX

There are more than 6,800 identified rare diseases, generally considered to be diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States at any time. Altogether, rare diseases affect an estimated 25 million to 30 million Americans, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. These conditions span so many specialties that even the most skilled clinicians around the world can struggle to see the complete picture.

“A patient might have cardiac symptoms, neurological issues, immune system concerns and physical differences — but when these signs are scattered across different body systems, it creates what we call the ‘elephant problem,’” Dr. Klee explains. “Each specialist sees their part clearly, but few clinicians can observe the whole elephant at once.”

Even further, what happens if the latest breakthrough occurs after an episode of clinical care? What then?

“Our understanding of what genes and what variants cause disease is growing,” Dr. Klee says. “So what we know today is different than what we knew six years ago, six months ago or even six days ago. When you have a static report, you miss out on what we’ve learned since that test.”

To address this challenge, in 2022 Dr. Klee’s teams launched an automated system called RENEW. The tool is built to literally renew clinical test results by looking at what’s been learned since the last time the test was run or the patient’s data was accessed.

The system works with elegant simplicity.

RENEW automatically pulls in newly published discoveries of disease-causing genetic variants from research labs around the world. It compares these findings against Mayo Clinic’s database of unsolved patient cases — nearly 2,000 and growing.

Special filters whittle down the flood of new genetic information to focus only on what’s meaningful and could explain a patient’s symptoms.

When it flags a match, a team of genomic researchers digs deeper by reviewing medical records and clinical histories and correlating DNA alterations with new findings. The question they ask: Could this newly described variant be the answer someone’s been waiting years to hear?

So far, RENEW has delivered dozens of definitive diagnoses for Mayo Clinic patients with rare and previously unexplained diseases. And it takes less than a minute per patient to run the analysis.

“Every time we get a diagnosis, it makes me feel proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish at Mayo,” Dr. Klee says. “It’s this concept that the patients put trust in — not my team, not a single clinician — they put their trust in Mayo Clinic, and Mayo Clinic as an organization has supported this type of really challenging work.

“The parents and families, they believe that someday we will call them with an answer. And it’s incredibly gratifying for everyone when we do.”

VISIONARY LEADERSHIP, VISIONARY BENEFACTORS

A bigger question is why does this happen seemingly so often at Mayo Clinic? While Dr. Klee’s engineering background might seem like an unconventional foundation for rare disease research, at Mayo Clinic, cross-collaboration and diverse skill sets aren’t just accepted — they are championed.

But even the best collaborative culture needs infrastructure to reach its potential. Mayo Clinic leadership invested in this space a decade ago, and it’s paying dividends today.

“One thing that has set Mayo Clinic apart from a lot of other academic medical centers was the foresight of our institution, and now President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., to think about data organization,” Dr. Klee says. “While other health systems were still figuring out electronic health records, Mayo Clinic was organizing all its clinical data in the cloud, creating Mayo Clinic Platform, de-identifying patient information and making it available for research.”

It was a massive investment bolstered by visionary benefactors despite an uncertain future, and the foresight it unlocked has set the stage for something much bigger.

“It opened the door for the transformative power of what we’re starting to realize in artificial intelligence, agentic AI and other emerging capabilities,” Dr. Klee says. “That realization is you’re only as successful as the data you have organized and readily available.”

In other words, Mayo Clinic didn’t just build strong and secure data systems. It built the foundation for the AI tools and future breakthroughs that didn’t even exist when the foundation was laid.

This work extends through Mayo Clinic Research enterprise priorities, including the Research Data Atlas, an initiative led by Dr. Klee to unify and mobilize research data at scale. It brings diverse research datasets into a secure, cloud-based environment where they become discoverable, interoperable and ready for advanced analysis. By increasing access to high-quality, harmonized data, the Research Data Atlas strengthens collaboration across the institution and accelerates Mayo Clinic’s ability to advance artificial intelligence-enabled discovery and translational research.

That infrastructure has allowed Dr. Klee to expand his impact beyond rare diseases. When Cheryl Willman, M.D., the Stephen and Barbara Slaggie Executive Director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs and Director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center¹, approached Dr. Klee about leading data and AI initiatives in oncology, he identified a chance to scale what he’d learned.

“I saw the opportunity in the Cancer Center to take a lot of what we had done in the Center for Individualized Medicine with regard to how we think about our genomic data and other omics data and organizing it to have an impact by breaking down barriers and opening doors to new discoveries.”

The same engineering mindset now applied to a different problem — making the data frictionless, accessible and useful across the entire enterprise to create systems that multiply the impact of every researcher, clinician and discovery.

RETURNING TO HIS ROOTS

Back to that conversation nearly 30 years ago in Dr. Prendergast’s office about the field that didn’t exist.

Bioinformatics employs hundreds of researchers at Mayo Clinic alone. And Dr. Prendergast’s prediction it would be important for at least 30 years has turned out to be conservative.

While Dr. Klee doesn’t have the same deep physician-patient relationships others in his family do, he keeps working on hope and healing in the way only an engineer could — leading teams who are building systems that never stop looking and leveraging infrastructure built with the forethought of what might be to come.

Because of that, in a cloud server room tonight, the system Dr. Klee championed runs. New databases of discovery are being checked against organized data files of patients. Algorithms are filtering results for meaningful changes.

And when tomorrow comes, a multidisciplinary team may get a notice to review results that could contain an answer someone has been waiting years to hear.

What kind of medicine can an engineer build? The kind that practices medicine even when patients aren’t there — because at Mayo Clinic, the needs of the patient come first, whenever and wherever they are.

1. Dr. Willman is also recognized as the David A. Ahlquist, M.D., Professorship in Cancer Research. ↩︎

The post The System Never Sleeps appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Charting Her Own Path

Whitney Thompson, M.D., M.Phil., was determined to pursue a fellowship that didn’t exist at Mayo Clinic or anywhere else she looked.

It was fitting that Dr. Thompson wanted to take a unique path, as little in her educational journey had been traditional up to that point. She was a Latin major in college who developed an interest in genetics. She traveled to England after graduation to earn a master’s in medical genetics from the University of Cambridge.

She was accepted into the University of Minnesota Medical School and fell in love with the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) during her third-year rotations. Dr. Thompson was certain that she wanted to pursue a residency and fellowship at the intersection of genetics and neonatology.

The problem was, she couldn’t find any organization that offered an educational pathway with this focus.

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“My mentor said there wasn’t really going to be much of a space for this because it was too niche,” Dr. Thompson says. “I didn’t listen. I told everybody this was my plan when I was interviewing for residencies. Mayo Clinic was the one place where the program director immediately said, ‘We can make that happen.’”

Dr. Thompson came to Mayo Clinic in Rochester in 2020 to begin a three-year pediatrics residency. She quickly made a mark for herself, helping to launch a rapid whole-genome sequencing (rWGS) program in the NICU, after benefactor support made a successful pilot possible.

Dr. Thompson decided to remain in Rochester after she finished her pediatrics residency, embarking on something that had never been done before at Mayo Clinic: a four-year dual integrated fellowship in neonatal medicine and clinical genomics.

To make this fellowship happen, Dr. Thompson worked closely with William A. Carey, M.D., the program director of Mayo Clinic’s Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Fellowship and the senior associate dean for Medicine and Pediatrics in Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education. Creating a new dual integrated fellowship required the approval of two governing boards: the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the American Board of Pediatrics.

Dr. Thompson put together a lengthy proposal that outlined what she planned to do every month for the following four years, as well as a personal statement about why she felt this route was necessary for her career goals.

After securing board approvals, Dr. Thompson then needed to get approvals from Mayo Clinic leadership in both the NICU program and Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education. Drs. Thompson and Carey say they are unaware of this specific dual fellowship previously existing anywhere in the U.S. The fellowship runs through 2027.

Dr. Thompson isn’t the first person to take on a dual integrated fellowship program at Mayo Clinic, just the first to do one in neonatal medicine and clinical genomics.

“This experience has already paid unbelievable dividends for Mayo Clinic. It’s the sort of thing any two training programs can consider,” Dr. Carey says. “Sometimes it's just a matter of asking questions. I can imagine virtually any two subspecialties at Mayo Clinic working together.”

The traditional path for a physician to become a neonatologist and geneticist would be a neonatology fellowship followed by a clinical genomics fellowship, spanning five years in total, after three years of pediatric residency. Combining overlapping components allowed the fellowship to be shaved down to four.

Creating a new fellowship did more than save a year, though.

“While it’s only one more year the traditional way, the point of integrating the two training programs had to do with the educational philosophy of it,” Dr. Carey explains. “We didn't want her to learn genetics in a silo and think about it like a geneticist and then come over here and think about neonatology like my faculty and I think about it.”

In 2023, the same year that Dr. Thompson began her fellowship, she became part of the Center for Individualized Medicine’s Clinician Investigator Training Program. Much of her clinical work in this role builds on the rWGS program she helped start as a pediatric resident, by focusing on the implementation of genomic technologies for NICU patients.

It was through the Clinician Investigator Training Program that Dr. Thompson met Laura Lambert, M.D., the director of Mayo Clinic's Functional Omics Resource (FORce). Drs. Thompson and Lambert co-founded BabyFORce in 2024.

“Being able to do all this has made a huge impact in my career,” says Dr. Thompson, who is a Dorothea Berggren Medical Innovation Scholar. “The teamwork here has been phenomenal. I'm now part of so many different departments and centers and helping build bridges between them.

“Mayo Clinic brings together expertise across different specialties better than anyone else.”

The post Charting Her Own Path appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

That kind of futuristic technology is now taking shape in labs at Mayo Clinic.

Arjun Athreya, Ph.D., M.S., an associate professor of pharmacology in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Mayo Clinic, believes answers to improving mental well-being might already be on your wrist. Smart wearable devices used by one-third of adults in the U.S. are quietly collecting data that could reveal shifts in our mental health. Combined with artificial intelligence (AI), Dr. Athreya thinks these tools could predict depression, burnout and other conditions before they become serious — catching warning signs in time to help people get the care they need, faster.

Eliminating Guesswork

For millions of people with depression, finding the right treatment often feels like guesswork. A medication might help one person and do little for another, and it often results in a frustrating trial-and-error approach to treatment.

The rise of AI offers a promising path forward. By analyzing digital biomarkers such as sleep patterns and heart rate variability, these tools could enable truly personalized care — catching problems early and showing doctors in real time whether treatments are working.

Dr. Athreya is dedicated to moving beyond traditional strategies, which is why he and his team built an AI system designed to eliminate uncertainty. By analyzing patterns in each patient’s genetic, biological and clinical data, Dr. Athreya’s system predicts which treatment is most likely to work for that individual before the prescription is even written.

Dr. Athreya's team has taken this work a step further. Rather than simply predicting whether a treatment might work, they're now using biomarkers to answer a more powerful question: Which treatment will work best for this specific patient?

In a recent study, the team combined brain imaging and blood biomarkers to match patients with depression to the most effective treatment for them — the first time this approach has been demonstrated successfully. It's a shift from trial and error to precision: finding the right treatment for the right person at the right time.

Expanding Digital Health Capabilities

In addition to using AI in healthcare to optimize depression treatment, Dr. Athreya and his team are using smartwatches and smartphones to track signs of stress and well-being, turning everyday technology into tools for prevention.

In one study, nearly 700 Mayo Clinic physicians and nurses wore smartwatches for a year as part of a project to monitor burnout and depression risk. The devices captured heart rate, sleep and activity patterns, while AI analyzed the data to detect early warning signs of declining well-being. When stress signals appeared, participants received prompts to take breaks or use coping mechanisms.

“Working with our healthcare colleagues on this project was deeply meaningful,” Dr. Athreya says. “They’re the ones caring for others every day — and this gave us a way to support their well-being.”

AI can advance new discoveries. It will foster new cures. It will find ways to engage with people in unprecedented ways.

— Arjun Athreya, Ph.D., M.S.

In another study, Dr. Athreya collaborated with Magdalena Romanowicz, M.D., a psychiatrist at Mayo Clinic, and used AI to monitor sleep and behavior of children between the ages of 3 and 7 who face significant behavioral challenges.

“These very young children with disruptive behaviors and poor emotional regulation are often being sent home from school,” Dr. Athreya says. “This can set the path for them to become dropouts, and they have a very high risk for mental health disorders as adolescents or young adults.”

With the assistance and consent of their parents or guardians, participants wore a smartwatch to measure their level of activity, heart rate, respirations and quality of sleep. By applying AI to this data, the model predicted the onset of tantrums or disruptive behavior and sent messages to the parents to help prevent poor behavior or intervene, including reminders to practice deep breathing with their child. These early interventions helped improve children’s emotional regulation and family well-being.

“I am cautiously optimistic that both efforts will provide interventions that are valuable to the user and support their well-being and mental health,” Dr. Athreya says.

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Creating a Better Future

Dr. Athreya believes AI will play a central role in a transformative era of mental health care coming soon.

“AI and digital are the new frontiers in mental health,” says Dr. Athreya. “Every day, we’re thinking beyond where the current standards are — and that’s been critical to our success. AI can advance new discoveries. It will foster new cures. It will find ways to engage with people in unprecedented ways.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Athreya’s team is focused on building technologies that can support people globally.

“We need to be handling a lot of these complicated disorders at a level beyond where we are right now,” he says. “We need to build technologies that can scale and get into the hands of people experiencing different challenges, in different communities and circumstances. This also means we have a responsibility to educate and train our future AI-workforce.”

It's personal for Dr. Athreya, who is also an Associate Dean in Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. An anonymous benefactor funded his education, and today he's paying it forward by mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers at Mayo Clinic as they explore how AI can democratize mental health care. His goal: scalable, affordable tools that bring help to anyone, anywhere.

"The progress we've made is more than I imagined possible even five years ago," he says. "With support from Mayo Clinic leadership, including my chair, and visionary benefactors, we're building something that can truly transform mental health care worldwide."

The post Unlocking Individualized Innovation With AI and Digital Health appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Every August 31, Whitney Thompson, M.D., M.Phil., travels to Chatfield, Minnesota, to release purple balloons.

On that day, Dr. Thompson is among the family and friends who come to Mill Creek Park to join Casey and Justine Bates — the parents commemorating the 18-month life of their late son, Oliver, who was diagnosed with WOREE syndrome, an ultrarare and incurable form of epilepsy that claimed his life in March 2022.

“I had the privilege of being with Oliver’s family at his diagnosis, and I was there when he took his last breath,” says Dr. Thompson, a dual fellow in neonatal medicine and clinical genomics at Mayo Clinic. “The bond we formed is hard to put into words. Being there is my way of continuing to care for his family and honor his life.”

WOREE syndrome (WWOX-related epileptic encephalopathy) is caused by a lack of an essential protein for brain development and function called WWOX. This is a result of mutations in the WWOX gene, which is located on the 16th chromosome.

“There’s still not a lot of information about it,” Justine says. “We were told to not expect him to live past 4, but he made it to his first birthday, which was very important to us.”

While Oliver’s life was brief, his legacy lives on at Mayo Clinic. Three years after he died, the life of Jorie Kraus, another child born with an ultrarare disease, would be transformed because of BabyFORce, the research and treatment procedures that began with Oliver.

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There for the Whole Journey

Nothing seemed especially distinctive about Oliver when he was born on Aug. 31, 2020, a day after his due date. Justine’s pregnancy had been uneventful.

But then at 5 ½ weeks old, Oliver had his first seizure. His parents rushed him to a nearby emergency room.

The hospital ran tests but was at a loss to explain the cause of that initial seizure and those that followed. Casey and Justine brought Oliver to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and he underwent a series of tests, including exome sequencing, which examined roughly 20,000 protein-coding genes, where many diseases originate.

For five agonizing weeks, Casey and Justine waited for the results.

“When you’re sitting and waiting, even for 24 hours, that can feel like a lifetime,” Casey says. “We felt hopeless.”

Finally, Casey and Justine received an answer: WOREE syndrome. It’s a recessive genetic condition that at the time had been diagnosed in fewer than 100 children.

Beyond symptom management, there were no treatments for WOREE syndrome, which carries an average life expectancy of just four years. But there was a new Mayo Clinic pediatrics resident who became very interested in Oliver’s case: Dr. Thompson.

“Dr. Thompson was the first one to really say, ‘I’ll take him,’” Justine recalls. “There were so many unknowns, but she said, ‘Whatever comes ahead, I’m there.’”

Though he was hospitalized multiple times, Oliver was able to spend much of his life at home before passing away on March 10, 2022.

That August 31, on what would have been Oliver’s second birthday, friends and family joined Casey and Justine to release purple balloons. Dr. Thompson was there, and she has returned for the balloon release every year since.

In 2024, the Bates family welcomed a new member: Whitney Bates, named in honor of the physician who had profoundly impacted their lives.

“Dr. Thompson was the person we could always turn to during the hardest time of our lives,” Justine says. “She always made sure that Oliver’s care and comfort were her priority.”

The Search for Faster Answers

The WOREE syndrome diagnosis, while painful to hear, had provided Casey and Justine with a measure of relief.

"Not knowing was so hard,” Casey says. “We feared the worst, and unfortunately we got the worst, but at least we knew why he was so sick.”

Seeing the Bates family endure the five-week wait for answers stuck with Dr. Thompson. She knew that Mayo Clinic could better meet the needs of seriously ill pediatric patients and their families.

The bond we formed is hard to put into words. Being there is my way of continuing to care for his family and honor his life.

— WHITNEY THOMPSON, M.D., M.PHIL.

Benefactor support and a collaboration with Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine enabled Mayo Clinic to pilot rapid whole-genome sequencing (rWGS) in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). rWGS analyzes a person’s genome — their entire genetic code — in a significantly shorter time frame than traditional WGS, which can take upward of 2–3 months to deliver complete results. rWGS allows clinicians to quickly identify genetic conditions to diagnose — an advantage that can be particularly valuable in critical situations.

During the pilot, which tested 10 babies, Dr. Thompson recalls organizing samples and obtaining consent from families in between her residency work shifts.

"After those 10 cases showed success, Mayo Clinic embraced rapid genome sequencing, and now it’s the standard of care in our NICU,” says Dr. Thompson, who is a Dorothea Berggren Medical Innovation Scholar. “It’s a good example of Mayo’s primary value of ‘the needs of the patient come first.’”

In Mayo Clinic’s rWGS program, clinicians use advanced technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to sequence a patient’s 3 billion DNA base pairs. This comprehensive analysis can identify even the most subtle genetic variants. Though it may not always lead to a diagnosis, it can provide some insights into a patient’s health challenges.

"It’s really humbling to think that because of our son, parents don’t have to wait five weeks for the results, because that was the hardest,” Casey says. “Plus so many things are much more treatable if they can be detected early enough.”

The rWGS program, launched at Mayo Clinic in June 2022, has since been expanded to some adults who exhibit symptoms that suggest genetic disease, enabling them to receive the same rapid, comprehensive DNA analysis. To date, more than 300 infants, children and adults have been offered rapid whole-genome sequencing.

"When you are dealing with an ultrarare disease, it’s surprising how much good you can do with just a diagnosis,” says Laura Lambert, Ph.D., the director of Mayo Clinic’s Functional Omics Resource (FORce). “To tell a family that maybe you could help — or just that you’re willing to try — is life-changing for them. But you can’t try to fix the problem unless you know what the problem is.”

A Powerful Connection

In December 2022, the same year that the rWGS program began in full, Dr. Lambert arrived at Mayo Clinic.

While completing her postdoctoral fellowship at University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Lambert began using an AI tool known as a reasoning agent, which can process information, make decisions and perform tasks based on logical inference. For people with ultrarare diseases, specific reasoning agents can identify treatment options, enabling precision medicine. Mayo Clinic provided Dr. Lambert access to state-of-the-art reasoning agents that could accelerate research.

"We’ve been heavily supported by the institution, not just financially but also through mentorship and the ability to make connections,” Dr. Lambert says. “At Mayo if you say to leadership, ‘I’m going to meet with this big company, can you come with me?’ they’ll say, ‘Of course.’

"And then there’s the way people react when they hear you’re from Mayo Clinic. They’re so excited to meet with us because they really feel hope that we’ll be able to do something.”

Laura Lambert, Ph.D., and Whitney Thompson, M.D., M.Phil.

Dr. Thompson began her four-year dual fellowship in 2023. Not long after, she was in a meeting to discuss a NICU patient and met Dr. Lambert.

The two immediately connected as both friends and colleagues.

"Our professional expertise is so complementary — we’re like puzzle pieces that fit together,” Dr. Lambert says. “We both have our specific areas of expertise and areas where we overlap, but we also really see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

In April 2024, Drs. Lambert and Thompson launched BabyFORce. BabyFORce takes the next step after rWGS, using an advanced understanding of functional omics and AI technology to bridge the gap between diagnosis and treatment for babies with rare genetic diseases.

BabyFORce’s second patient was a girl with an ultrarare disease, whom Dr. Thompson had met a year before: Jorie Kraus.

An Unfixable Condition

Dave and Joanie Kraus had little time with their newborn daughter following her birth.

Jorie’s arrival on June 8, 2023, had come via a planned Cesarean delivery at 33 weeks of pregnancy, three weeks after Joanie had been admitted to Mayo Clinic Hospital – Rochester, Methodist Campus due to preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and signs of organ damage.

Jorie, who weighed just 3 pounds, 5 ounces, was quickly moved to the Rochester Level IV NICU, reserved for the most critically ill newborns and preemies.

"The pregnancy was really rough, but we thought, ‘It’ll be OK once she’s born,’” Joanie says. “But when she was born, the doctors immediately knew something wasn’t right.”

To tell a family that maybe you could help — or just that you’re willing to try — is life-changing for them. But you can’t try to fix the problem unless you know what the problem is.

— LAURA LAMBERT, PH.D.

Like all parents whose babies are in the Level IV NICU and are suspected of genetic diseases, Dave and Joanie were offered the opportunity to meet with a genetic counselor and learn about rWGS. They decided to proceed with the testing.

The rWGS identified a 27-gene deletion on Jorie’s 10th chromosome, resulting in a shortage of a critical protein from her WAC gene. There was only one possible diagnosis: DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome, a condition that had been diagnosed in fewer than 30 cases worldwide.

Dave and Joanie were told DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome would result in low muscle tone and developmental delays.

"When they told us Jorie had DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome, I remember Joanie said, ‘What does this mean?’ And I said, ‘Well, everything else was fixable. This one isn’t,’” Dave recalls. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Searching for Hope

During Jorie’s 73-day stay in the NICU, the Krauses met Dr. Thompson.

Jorie’s first weeks were frightening as she battled the effects of a condition for which there were no known treatments. Multiple times her vital signs suddenly dipped as her eyes dilated and she stopped breathing.

"The first time it happened, I was holding her, and she went lifeless,” Dave says. “I thought she had died in my arms.”

An otolaryngologist discovered Jorie had a tiny airway that was being further constricted by the low muscle tone caused by DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome. Surgeons fixed the breathing issue by inserting a feeding tube that bypassed her pharynx.

Eventually Jorie was stable enough to live at home, but her parents needed to drive 90 minutes to Mayo Clinic multiple times each week for her care. At a year old she was behind in every development measure: cognitive, receptive language, expressive language, fine motor skills and gross motor skills.

Throughout Jorie’s first year, the Krauses stayed in regular contact with Mayo Clinic and Dr. Thompson. When she and Dr. Lambert founded BabyFORce, they asked Jorie’s parents to consider enrolling their daughter.

Through BabyFORce, Mayo Clinic clinicians can move from diagnosis to personalized treatment and potentially uncover therapeutic options where none previously existed.

Drs. Lambert and Thompson used a reasoning agent to search for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs that might possess additional, unrecognized uses.

"Drug repurposing is the quickest way to help these patients, because it takes years to develop a new drug,” Dr. Lambert says. “Reasoning agents make it possible to match genetic information with existing drugs that we know are safe.”

Jorie’s doctors were looking for a drug that might boost expression of the WAC gene, which provides instructions for making a protein involved in several important cellular processes. Clonazepam, a readily available seizure medication that was first approved by the FDA in 1975, emerged as a promising candidate.

Drs. Thompson and Lambert reviewed the research and decided to test clonazepam on Jorie’s skin cells, where the WAC gene is typically highly expressed. The drug triggered a surge of the critical protein in Jorie’s cells. Multiple tests confirmed the results.

"When the doctors gave us the news, I think they may have been as excited as we were,” Dave recalls. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen researchers that giddy.”

Because clonazepam was already FDA-approved, the Krauses didn’t have to wait for clinical trials. Jorie was given her first dose of clonazepam on April 1, 2025.

As promising as the labs had been, no one was expecting Jorie’s response.

A Startling Transformation

Development milestones that Jorie had missed — that seemed like they might never occur — arrived in waves.

On April 2, a day after the first dose of clonazepam, 22-month-old Jorie began side-traveling. After three days, she was toddling behind a walker, stable and confident. Within a week, Jorie had mastered going up and down stairs.

It wasn’t just Jorie’s mobility that roared to life. She began speaking — not babbling, but saying clear, distinct words — and she was scribbling with crayons at a level that was developmentally age-appropriate.

"We were so excited with the labs but also nervous,” Dr. Lambert says. “There’s always the chance that it could have been a false-positive, or maybe what worked in cell cultures wouldn’t work in vivo.

“It’s hard to describe how amazing it was to see how well — and immediately — clonazepam worked.”

Jorie has continued to narrow the gap between her development and the typical one of her peers. She loves music, puzzles, fine motor toys, Poke-A-Dot books and memory games.

Dave and Joanie have started The Jorie Effect, a foundation to support BabyFORce. The Krauses want to make it possible for more families to experience what they did: a second chance at a life that once seemed to be slipping out of reach.

“Jorie’s syndrome is like one big processing disorder,” Joanie explains. “It’s really hard for her to tell her feet to move, and she has structural anomalies like low muscle tone that make balance and coordination harder.

"With clonazepam, it was as though the lights came on all of a sudden. Jorie still has a long journey ahead, but it’s like the syndrome is reversing itself, which is just incredible.”

While The Jorie Effect supports BabyFORce, it exists because of baby Oliver, whose case drove Dr. Thompson to champion rapid whole-genome sequencing. Oliver’s legacy lives in every family who receives answers in days rather than weeks at Mayo Clinic.

Now each August, when purple balloons drift over the summer sky in Southeast Minnesota, they mark not an ending but a beginning. It’s the foundation upon which second chances like Jorie’s are built, and the promise that conditions once deemed unfixable might yield something different: hope.

The post To Jorie, From Oliver appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

Accelerating Hope

Sometimes, one seemingly insignificant moment divides life into before and after. For Karen Koellner, it was the simple act of leaning over in bed to grab her phone charger that changed everything.

The pain was sudden and sharp as she shifted onto her side. She got up and walked to the mirror to see what was wrong. That’s when she discovered a lump under her arm. "I instantly was like, 'Oh my gosh, I must have cancer,’" she says.

The next morning she was on the phone with her doctor, who sent a referral to Mayo Clinic’s Arizona campus. She braced herself for what often comes next in moments like these: waiting. She was told it could take up to a week to receive a call back.

For patients facing a possible life-altering diagnosis, the referral process can feel like suspended time. But Karen’s phone rang just two hours later, thanks to intelligent automation working quietly behind the scenes.

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Finding Hope in a Time of Uncertainty

When something feels wrong, reassurance can’t come fast enough. Getting an appointment on the calendar is the first step toward answers.

"Patients are worried whether or not they're going to get in to be seen," says Erin Layman, operations manager at Mayo Clinic. Timeliness matters just as much. Mayo Clinic in Arizona alone receives more than 60,000 referrals per year, a number that continues to grow.

Until recently, processing those referrals required a time-consuming manual system.

"It took maybe two or three people to validate the faxes," says Gabriel Hernandez, patient liaison at Mayo Clinic. "It could be anywhere from a few pages to a hundred pages, and someone had to scan through each page to determine what each fax concerned."

Because of this lengthy process, there could be delays in callbacks. When patients are seeking care for potentially life-threatening conditions, those setbacks can mean prolonged fear, mounting uncertainty and critical lost time. "Some of these are serious cancer diagnoses, so it's a matter of life and death for some patients," Gabriel adds.

For an organization grounded in providing hope and healing to as many patients as possible, these delays demanded a solution. Mayo Clinic moved quickly to transform the system. That's where generative artificial intelligence (AI) entered the picture.

The Age of Automation

At the scale Mayo Clinic operates, having a human scan every page of every fax to locate key clinical details and determine urgency simply wasn’t sustainable. Referrals were arriving faster than they could be manually processed.

With generative AI’s help, Erin says information can now be quickly extracted from a variety of different documents and summarized into a cover sheet that is reviewed by one of Mayo Clinic’s agents for accuracy. "Then that individual can move it forward to the next step in the process," he says.

This technology doesn’t replace people. Instead, it empowers them by reducing administrative burden to focus on what matters most: the patient.

When the new automated system launched in July 2024, the impact was immediate. With the technology in place, referrals for patients with serious or complex medical conditions are now reviewed and processed in less than 24 hours.

Mayo Clinic trialed its new automated referral system in Phoenix, Arizona, and Rochester, Minnesota. The plan is to expand it to the Jacksonville, Florida, campus in 2026.

A Faster Path to Care

Gabriel says patients are frequently surprised to hear back so quickly. Karen was no exception.

Because the intelligent referral processing system flagged her case as urgent, staff acted quickly. By the next day, appointments were scheduled across multiple specialties and her care team was already coordinating next steps.

Karen’s intuition was right: She was later diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. Today, she is cancer-free.

"Time is so important when you get a cancer diagnosis," Karen says.

Erin says Mayo Clinic invested in this technology because patients needed it.

"With this automation, patients are getting the help they need sooner," he says. "For the patients, that means hope."

The post Accelerating Hope appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The Pathfinder

Brian Lundstrom, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, brings a distinctive and, in many ways, quietly radical perspective to BIONIC. His vision centers on noninvasive neuromodulation as a path toward durable disease modification and, in some cases, cure, rather than lifelong symptom management.

With a background in biophysics, Dr. Lundstrom found his scientific calling in neurophysiology and studying the neural code — how neurons compute and encode signals. He became interested in working with patients with epilepsy, who routinely have their neural activity recorded to better understand the underlying disease. Because of this, epilepsy provides a unique opportunity to understand and improve neurological function for many disorders.

Ultimately, Dr. Lundstrom had a deep scientific goal: developing objective ways to measure brain excitability and function. With that foundation, clinicians could personalize brain stimulation, predict how patients will respond and intentionally drive long-term care.

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This led him to his clinical focus on the use of neural stimulation to treat epilepsy — both invasive (using implanted electrodes) and noninvasive (through external or wearable devices). And it’s through noninvasive therapies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), that he sees opportunities to change the field.

“I’ve treated patients with epilepsy who undergo repeated stimulation, both invasive and noninvasive, and see a lasting reduction in their seizures, even after treatment has stopped,” says Dr. Lundstrom. “This is likely because our brains are highly plastic and can relearn healthier patterns of activity over time given optimal stimulation.”

What makes a noninvasive approach so compelling is its lower risk, with a lower barrier to access. “Patients must undergo surgery for an implanted device, and these are typically offered as a ‘last resort,’ when other treatment options have failed,” says Dr. Lundstrom. “But external stimulation is much lower risk and provides an opportunity to intervene much earlier in the disease course.”

[BIONIC supports a future] where we’re not only building more sophisticated devices, but these devices are more accessible, reaching more people and redefining how we think about neurological care.

— Brian Lundstrom, M.D., Ph.D.

These devices can be used outside of a hospital setting. Already some patients receive home-based stimulation for 20-30 minutes a day, several days a week, guided by their clinicians. In addition to epilepsy, these approaches can help with mood disorders, pain, tinnitus and even mild cognitive impairment, improving access to therapy across geographical barriers.

And Mayo Clinic is uniquely positioned to lead in this new arena because of its primary value: The needs of the patient come first.

“These noninvasive technologies attract less attention from commercial investment because they can be harder to monetize,” says Dr. Lundstrom. "But at Mayo Clinic, we are focused on what benefits our patients the most. And BIONIC exemplifies that, by supporting a future where we’re not only building more sophisticated devices, but these devices are more accessible, reaching more people and redefining how we think about neurological care.”

The post The Pathfinder appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The Pioneer

To Gregory Worrell, M.D., Ph.D., William L. McKnight-3M Professor of Neuroscience, BIONIC doesn’t feel futuristic, but rather like the next logical innovation in neurological care — work Mayo Clinic has pioneered for years.

“We’ve already invested over a decade into building the scientific, technical, clinical and ethical foundation of this program,” he says. “BIONIC is our opportunity to harness emerging device and digital technologies to scale this work globally and make major advancements rather than incremental progress.”

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Dr. Worrell — who is also a recipient of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Established-Investigator Career Development Award in Translation Research — is a pioneer in neurostimulation. His research focuses on understanding how seizures develop and how epilepsy affects memory, mood and sleep.

Through his work, Dr. Worrell and his team have created a “next-generation” implantable brain-sensing and stimulation system. This technology leverages artificial intelligence to learn from ongoing brain activity and personalize a patient’s therapy over time, advancing toward truly autonomous adaptive neuromodulation. Currently, he is leading clinical trials to evaluate this technology in patients with medically intractable focal and generalized epilepsy.

“Every person’s epilepsy is different,” says Dr. Worrell. “Patients need personalized, precision treatment because seizures and epilepsy-related symptoms aren’t generated by the same circuit in every person. Importantly, brain activity changes with brain state — whether a person is awake, sleeping, dreaming or experiencing a seizure. Yet clinicians have traditionally stimulated the brain the same way regardless of brain state. There’s no adaptation.”

This is the real chance to personalize treatment — when we’re already there, already recording, already learning from that patient’s brain.

— Gregory Worrell, M.D., Ph.D.

Because patients already undergo extensive monitoring during invasive epilepsy evaluations, the care team can test multiple stimulation targets and parameters at the bedside. This allows clinicians to optimize therapy for each patient before they permanently implant the device.

Dr. Worrell sees this approach as a bridge, enabling learning and personalization at the bedside today, while advancing toward a future in which implanted device systems continuously learn from brain activity and adapt therapy in real time. 

“We can now quantify the brain’s state in real time and test adaptive therapy in the moment,” he says. “This is the real chance to personalize treatment — when we’re already there, already recording, already learning from that patient’s brain.”

The post The Pioneer appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.

The Architect

For Sean Pittock, M.D., Glenn W. and Katherine K. Hasse Chair of Neurology and Applebaum Family Professor of Neurosciences, BIONIC represents the natural evolution of work he's championed for nearly two decades.

In 2006, Dr. Pittock established the first dedicated Autoimmune Neurology Clinic in the United States — a multidisciplinary practice built on a transformative insight: that many conditions dismissed as untreatable neurodegenerative diseases were actually reversible autoimmune disorders responsive to immunotherapy. His approach has always been translational, extending laboratory discoveries directly to patient care.

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As a director of Mayo Clinic's Neuroimmunology Laboratory, he has spent the last decade building multidisciplinary teams focused on Mayo Clinic’s Connect to Cure initiative. He has built his career on finding biomarkers that allow clinicians to intervene before irreversible damage occurs.

Now, with BIONIC, Dr. Pittock sees an opportunity to apply that same philosophy to the brain's electrical signals.

[Electrical signaling data] is an underused biological resource, and one of our major goals is to harmonize all of that data in a new sort of biobank.

— Sean Pittock, M.D.

"A lot of electrical signaling data is already collected as a routine part of neurological diagnostics and surgical care," he says. "Really, it's an underused biological resource, and one of our major goals is to harmonize all of that data in a new sort of biobank."

For Dr. Pittock, collecting and interpreting this electrical data, particularly how signals change with aging or disease, is crucial for detecting conditions early enough to make a difference.

The post The Architect appeared first on Mayo Clinic Magazine.