Mayo Clinic releases new AI-powered clinical decision support tool to ‘individualize’ patient care
Mayo Clinic has unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool that it says will bring a new level of real-time clinical support to patient care providers, allowing them to better individualize the delivery of services.
The tool, which does not have a specific name, has been integrated into the Mayo Clinic Platform—the technology initiative that allows the nonprofit health system, outside provider groups and researchers to make better use of patient data.
The tool, described simply as a “clinical decision support solution,” will bring “evidence-informed guidance directly into clinicians’ workflows,” catered to more than 35 specialties. It can be used to answer clinical questions and explore options for care and diagnosis, in an effort to guide the decisions clinicians and patients make for a treatment plan, the Mayo Clinic wrote in a statement.
By gathering data automatically, the AI is designed to reduce administrative burden, cut down on the need to seek information from different data sources, and ultimately free doctors and advanced practice providers so they can spend more time interacting with patients.
Mayo Clinic added that the tool is available to any healthcare provider group that uses the Mayo Clinic Platform. To that end, the clinical decision support solution can be integrated directly into many electronic health record systems, with the health system planning to improve compatibility as time goes on.
"Clinicians have access to a vast amount of medical knowledge, but finding relevant information for individualized patient care takes valuable time," Maneesh Goyal, chief operating officer of Mayo Clinic Platform, said in a statement. "With this new solution, we are bringing trusted Mayo Clinic knowledge directly into the clinical workflow so clinicians can spend less time searching for information across multiple resources and more time focused on patient care."
The onboard AI will be “informed by multiple clinical tools, reducing the need for clinicians to navigate multiple independent resources,” in an effort to streamline workflows.
Mayo Clinic said the feature was developed in alignment with its commitment to “responsible AI” deployment, meaning it has been evaluated for safety, effectiveness and security. Human oversight into its rollout will be ongoing, with patient privacy being a key priority.
The Minnesota-based health system added that the AI is not meant to replace the need for human review. Instead, the tool should only be used to support patient care encounters.
"The CDS solution is designed to assist healthcare professionals as they make patient care decisions; it does not replace clinical judgment," Gelareh Zadeh, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic, said. "Mayo Clinic physicians have provided feedback on the different tools to ensure the solution supports clinicians and reflects Mayo Clinic's approach to patient care."
Backed by an LLM
In its announcement, Mayo Clinic highlighted two features of the clinical decision support solution, including a “specialty-specific chat,” backed by a large language model (LLM) that surfaces “relevant information to help clinicians reason through complex cases,” citing real clinical research and peer-reviewed literature to make its recommendations.
The knowledge base the AI pulls from is scheduled to be updated on a daily basis.
Supporting this LLM chat are twenty-two clinical calculators, which can be interacted with via text or voice. These calculators, many of which are proprietary to the Mayo Clinic, will provide “industry-standard medical information” to help guide clinical decisions, based on up-to-date protocols for diagnosis and treatment.
Access began this month, with the Mayo Clinic making its announcement on Nov. 3.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.