Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation is “Transforming” the future of health care

A.J. Montpetit assists with external communications for the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation and he has some weight on his shoulders. “One of the goals of the Center for Innovation (CFI) is to create an online community that demonstrates Mayo Clinic is creating a leading resource for people in health care who have great ideas to improve the health care experience and don’t know where to go with them,” he said.

The role of the CFI center is to “transform the experience and delivery of health and health care with a people/patient-centered focus,” which is not a far cry from Mayo Clinic’s primary value, “the needs of the patient come first.” This type of work embodies the vision of DMC to achieve the highest quality experience for patients, as well as visitors and community members now and into the future.

The CFI is incorporating the very design of health care into existing Mayo Clinic values. Through a human-centered focus, curiosity, and a culture of multidisciplinary teamwork, the Center for Innovation focuses on taking innovative ideas for medical practice and creating real-world solutions to change the patient’s health care experience: “A Medical Transformation.”

Transfore-2015-logoEnter Transform 2015. Transform is an annual event hosted by CFI that was held in late September, and brought more than 800 thought leaders from around the globe to Rochester. Together, they explored innovative ways to tackle the challenges of transforming the future of health care.

The theme of this year’s Transform 2015 conference was People Power Health. “The theme underscores the momentum underway around the world,” said Barbara Spurrier, the Center for Innovation’s administrative director, in an August interview for Mayo Clinic. “The center of gravity is shifting away from traditional hospitals and health care – to the people,” she said.

Attendees observed people-powered health and innovation first-hand. One of the event highlights was a pop-up MakerSpace where visionaries created a nebulizer for less than $10 that was powered by a bike pump.

The sessions from Transform 2015 will soon be live on YouTube at no cost to viewers, extending the experience to innovators worldwide.

“There is an exciting energy among these like-minded people, regardless of where they are in world,” Montpetit stated. “They all have their eyes on the prize of making health care better for patients.”

Events like Transform support DMC’s goal to ensure patients from around the globe feel welcome, comfortable, and engaged while in our community and reinforce Minnesota’s status as a global center for the highest quality health care.