Becker's Hospital Review

18 INNOVATION Mayo turns innovation into a 'global team sport' By Naomi Diaz R ochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic has received a $50 million philanthropic gi from Florida donors Gilchrist and Amy Berg to support its Innovation Exchange, now renamed the Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange. e endowment is intended to help Mayo address complex and underserved healthcare challenges through global collaboration and patient-focused innovation, according to the organization. Established in 2019, the Exchange has served as a launchpad for startups and entrepreneurs working in diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices and digital health. With the new funding, Mayo Clinic said it plans to expand the Exchange's reach and impact. e platform does not take equity in the companies it supports. "is endowment allows us to cement the foundation we've built," Jennie Kung, vice chair of the Exchange, told Becker's. "It gives us the foundation to grow, scale and accelerate our mission to shape what healthcare can look like in the future." Unlike traditional accelerators and venture-backed incubators, the Exchange operates as a philanthropy-driven initiative, according to Mayo Clinic. Its model focuses on supporting innovation without financial return. "We're a steward of healthcare innovation," Ms. Kung said. "Our role is to reframe, bring structure and shape what's next to make sure breakthroughs reach the people who need them most." e Exchange's global footprint is a key part of its strategy to drive impact. e platform has a presence in countries including Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom. It connects early-stage companies with Mayo's clinical and scientific experts and collaborates with government agencies, researchers and non-healthcare entities such as NASA. "Healthcare innovation is a global team sport," Ms. Kung said. "We're embedding ourselves in local ecosystems and connecting the dots between what's happening in, for example, Norway, Brazil and beyond." e Bergs, early supporters of the Exchange, have contributed to shaping its mission. eir donation will help fund early-stage research, mentorship and cross-disciplinary collaboration. e goal, according to Mayo Clinic, is to support promising ideas with the potential for real-world impact. Operating in alignment with the Mayo Clinic Model of Care, the Exchange aims to remove barriers to innovation while ensuring equitable access to resources. It functions as a mission-driven, neutral platform focused on accelerating the development of new healthcare solutions. "ere's no ROI metric here," Ms. Kung said. "Our return is simple: did we help change a life?" Mayo Clinic said the Exchange now has a presence on six continents, with a growing network of partners aimed at advancing innovation in healthcare. n Why Judy Faulkner shifted Epic's focus to inpatient EHRs By Giles Bruce E arly in the company's history, Epic created EHRs for both inpatient and outpatient care but then decided to concentrate on where there was less competition: the ambulatory side. Founder and CEO Judy Faulkner believed health systems would eventually want an EHR for both, so in five years the company would pick up inpatient again. And that's what Epic did. "When we said we were going back into inpatient, consultants, advisors and other healthcare experts told us not to," Ms. Faulkner recalled in a July 7 blog post. "They told us that other vendors had been doing inpatient for years. That we were too late. That it was too hard. And so on. Not a single expert group supported our decision to develop inpatient. But they also didn't realize that we had done it before and knew a lot about it." At the time, she told her staff that within a year Epic would have a single EHR that integrated both ambulatory and inpatient facilities, because health systems would want all their patient information in one place. "The staff gasped, and everyone at Epic now who was there at the time still remembers that meeting. We were heads down for a year, and we got it done," she wrote. "Obviously, because we're continuing to work on this ever since, there was (and is) more and more to do. Over time, we have added many more modules and made the system more robust and easier to use." n

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