The transforming laboratory landscape
How to leverage new tools and technologies to enhance patient care
The laboratory is critical to patient care, revealing diagnoses and providing valuable insights to guide treatments. By understanding the transformative laboratory landscape, as well as how to harness new tools and technologies, both healthcare providers and patients stand to have better access, quality and accessibility to healthcare.
How did the pandemic impact diagnostics?
WM: The pandemic has accelerated changes in healthcare, particularly in shaping the role of diagnostics in patient care. For the first time in my career, people were consumed by the topic of testing, and laboratory terms made it into the mainstream lexicon. Patients now expect to have greater access to diagnostic testing and better ease of care, requiring healthcare providers to meet patients where they are as opposed to requiring them to come in for testing services.
What laboratory transformations have you seen as a result of the pandemic?
WM: For a period during the pandemic, everyone had to test at home to attend events and go to specific locations. The demand from patients was to have greater access to testing as well as more convenient access to this type of testing. Since that time, the societal expectation has been set and substantive investments have been made in the diagnostic infrastructure required to deliver care and testing outside of the hospital. Both established companies and startups are moving into this space for digital diagnostics and digital care overall.
Digital tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation are having a rapid impact on healthcare. How can the laboratory leverage these tools?
WM: The clinical laboratory generates around 70% of the quantitative data in the health record, so when you think of the evolving technologies and tools that leverage data to advance healthcare, the lab is the logical place to start. Many AI algorithms look at the labs as the primary data source to drive the application.
There are tools being introduced into the testing workflows to advance insights, improve test turnaround time, and reduce inefficiencies. Last year at Mayo Clinic Laboratories, we performed 27 million tests, so you can imagine the possibilities for AI and automation to streamline operations as well and get results back to the healthcare provider and patient as quickly as possible. Another opportunity I see for
AI in the laboratories is how this data could be used from a clinical operations perspective. Specific results could be flagged faster to the provider to optimize patients’ care.
What barriers come with implementing AI and automation?
WM: There will be a few barriers when it comes to implementation of these technologies, ranging from reimbursement and regulatory challenges, to reluctancy to embrace them, to concerns of ultimate accountability. That said, as AI becomes more and more prevalent in daily life, I suspect we will see an expectation from patients that these tools are applied more to their healthcare. They will expect their data and healthcare overall to be more accessible and understandable.
As we contemplate the introduction of AI and machine learning into clinical practice, we need to think about how they will be both regulated and reimbursed, as these will influence how willing providers will be to use them. With the burnout pervasive in healthcare staff, if we can demonstrate that these tools reduce the burden of repetitive, low-value tasks, we can potentially shift the scales from reluctance to embracing new tools and technologies. These technologies must not only introduce efficiency but also increase quality. While these tools should improve care delivery, accountability for patient safety and potentially harmful errors will reside with the care provider, not dissimilar to AIassisted vehicle operation or piloting a plane.
How is Mayo Clinic Laboratories implementing digital tools and technologies?
WM: We are developing internal use cases and making those use cases applicable to improve patient care. We have made significant investments in AI, digital pathology, and growing the workforce’s skills and capabilities. Patient centricity is vital as we understand concerns, engender trust and demonstrate quality to use technology where we think it will make the biggest difference in patient access and accessibility to healthcare. This Executive Insight was produced and brought to you by: