Mayo Clinic Files IPO Prospectus: Pioneering the Future of Integrated Healthcare and Digital Innovation

“Mayo Clinic” is a name that has resonated across the United States and even globally.

Its origins can be traced back to the mid-19th century, when it was founded in Rochester, Minnesota, by American surgeons William James Mayo and his brother Charles Horace Mayo. It gradually expanded its operations, beginning to employ other physicians and nurses. In 1919, the Mayo Properties Association was established, marking the transition of their private medical practice into a nonprofit institution. Currently, Mayo Clinic operates across three states: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Scottsdale, Arizona, with the Rochester campus being the largest and most renowned.

Its renown at home and abroad stems from its high-quality medical services, which have kept it consistently ranked among the top three in the United States for comprehensive medical strength. Moreover, last month, leveraging the Mayo Clinic’s influence, Rochester announced a $6.5 billion investment to build a new global pharmaceutical and medical center. You might assume that the driving forces behind this are Mayo’s clinical care, medical education, and medical research, but what you may not realize is that it has another ace up its sleeve—Innovation. It is reflected not only in the pursuit of excellence in medical technology and research, but also in the strategic utilization of the Internet.

Software and Data Platform

Mayo Clinic’s first foray into the internet can be traced back to 1975, when it launched an efficient and flexible online computer system that used barcode technology to directly retrieve medical records.

Nowadays, with the rapid development of internet technology, clinics are able to maintain up-to-date, comprehensive medical records for each patient and integrate with laboratory, pathology, and radiology departments. This integrated system allows physicians and patients to access all clinical data, such as laboratory and radiology reports, from a single location.

As medical records continued to evolve, Mayo Clinic began focusing on mobile health in 2009.

In late 2009, Mayo Clinic and DoApp jointly established mRemedy, a mobile health app company. The company initially developed consumer-oriented medical apps, with its core product being myTality, a patient-focused mobile health application. On June 19, 2012, it was acquired by Axial, a healthcare transformation technology provider.

The subsequent internet initiative came more than a year later. In January 2014, Mayo Clinic began research on leveraging smartphones for telemedicine. This study marked the first real-world application of smartphone-based teleradiology diagnostic applications in network testing for remote stroke treatment.

High-quality medical imaging is delivered via smartphones to assess stroke symptoms in patients in remote areas through telemedicine systems. Currently, Mayo Clinic’s Telestroke network spans 10 hospitals across Arizona. Among the physicians at Mayo Clinic and these ten hospitals, there are more than 1,000 emergency consultation providers.

On February 20 of the same year, $1.1 million was allocated for the development of mobile data management tools. The project also received funding from Social+Capital Partnership and Rock Health.

Nearly a year later, on New Year’s Day 2015, the Mayo Clinic launched its Healthy Living website, replacing the Embody Health portal.

On March 14 of the same year, Mayo Clinic launched an online micro-clinic spanning North America. Its interactive online service, “Consult a Mayo Expert,” provides medical care meeting the same standards as those at Mayo Clinic, enabling real-time consultations with Mayo physicians. Supplementary online opinions or consultations are available within 24 to 36 hours, with no direct fees charged to patients.

Existing ratings suggest that Mayo Clinic’s app is well received by both patients and healthcare providers. As Mr. Ing Tiong, Senior Project Director in the IT Department of Mayo Clinic, once stated to the media, “At Mayo, we don’t write software; we write healthcare.”

Hardware

Smart hardware appears capable of performing a wide range of tasks. In the medical field, it can monitor, measure, and even contribute to diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, many hospitals are considering whether to provide smart devices such as iPads to healthcare professionals and patients. Some U.S. hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic, have already begun experimenting with these devices to enhance the medical experience for both providers and patients.

According to searchable sources, Mayo Clinic began using smart hardware in 2012.

The hospital provides heart disease patients with iPads equipped with automated patient navigation services, loaded with Mayo Clinic-related information and apps, to help them understand surgical procedures, their treatment plans, and their potential recovery process.

It also collaborates with Apple, Fitbit, and others to track and monitor the recovery of heart surgery patients.

Three years later, Mayo Clinic partnered with Gentag, an intellectual property development company, to develop wireless sensors for the treatment of obesity and diabetes. On March 3, 2015, Mayo Clinic and Gentag entered into an agreement to develop wireless wearable biosensors leveraging near-field communication (NFC) technology to help combat obesity and diabetes. The system will assist researchers in monitoring physical activity and treating obesity and related conditions.

Mayo Clinic Enterprise Accelerator

In March 2013, the Mayo Clinic and the non-profit organization Rochester Area Economic Development Initiative established the Mayo Clinic Business Accelerator in Rochester. Within just five months of its opening, the accelerator had onboarded 16 entities, including established companies, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and service providers. To accommodate the growing number of participating businesses, $120,000 was invested in October 2014 to expand the facility.

Two months later, in partnership with the startup incubator Techstars, we launched the Techstars++ program for healthcare startups to accelerate development aimed at improving patient care quality. According to the official website, representative companies currently include:

Collaboration & Investment

Mayo began venturing into the investment sector in 2008, with its first move being an investment in Kardia Health Systems, an information technology and services company. It has since gradually expanded its investment efforts each year, such as in China’s ConquerHealth (Kangsheng Global) and, most recently, Lifecode (formerly known as SVBio).

When it comes to collaboration, Mayo Clinic has also partnered with major industry leaders across various sectors while “supporting” startups, including Apple, IBM, Epic, and Rock Health.

In 2012, Mayo Clinic began partnering with Apple to integrate its software and services. This collaboration included participation in the development of the HealthKit platform, where Mayo primarily provided insights through data analysis of the system. Subsequently, HealthKit was integrated into Mayo’s systems to help patients monitor metrics such as blood pressure. With Apple’s support, a series of Mayo-specific iPhone and iPad applications have been developed, a process that Apple has also treated as a case study.

On April 16, 2014, a partnership was established with Better, a California-based digital health startup, to provide users with services including a personal health assistant, nurse hotline, automated symptom checker, personalized health information, and electronic medical records. Patients can also interact directly with physicians, who may prescribe certain types of medications via telephone. The monthly subscription fee for this service is $49. Better offers a free tier of service, which does not include physician interaction capabilities.

On September 8, 2014, a partnership was established with IBM. Concept trials were conducted through IBM Watson to provide patients with suitable clinical trials more quickly and efficiently. Currently, cognitive computing is primarily used to match cancer patients with appropriate clinical trials. This enables the Mayo Clinic to conduct over 8,000 human research studies at any given time. The Mayo Clinic is also working with IBM to expand Watson’s knowledge corpus by incorporating data from the Mayo Clinic and public databases such as ClinicalTrials.gov, while training the knowledge base to analyze patient records and clinical trial criteria to provide optimal matches.

At the end of 2014, a partnership was signed with Techstars, a Seattle-based accelerator. Techstars leverages technology to facilitate the transformation of healthcare systems and helps more startups establish connections with the healthcare industry. Through this collaboration, Mayo Clinic naturally gained access to a broader network of startups. Reportedly, Techstars currently partners with 500 companies.

The partnership with Rock Health is similar to that of Techstars; Rock Health matches these companies with the clinical operations of hospitals, and Mayo Clinic collaborates with these tech entrepreneurs to develop better products.

On February 11, 2015, a partnership was established with Google to enhance health information search. Google adjusted medical keywords for 400 common conditions to provide users with more practical search results. This medical information appears in the Knowledge Graph panel alongside Google’s standard search results, enabling users to access specific details about symptoms, treatments, and other aspects of particular conditions.

Healthcare information provided by Google Search also includes: whether a disease is common (with illustrations and explanations); who is at higher risk for the disease; and how it is treated.

Another strategy is to collaborate with vendors and online healthcare platforms, such as partnering with Epic, the EHR giant, to co-design cloud storage servers and independently establish data centers, as well as working with DocSpera, an online physician communication platform.

In fact, Mayo Clinic’s foray into mobile health extends far beyond this. It is also actively expanding beyond the U.S. market to enter China’s healthcare market, which offers substantial growth potential yet suffers from a severe shortage of comprehensive medical services commensurate with its economic development.

Mayo Clinic in China

In June 2011, Mayo Clinic entered into a strategic partnership with KingMed Diagnostics Group (Kangsheng Huanqiu), injecting capital into the company. Through its Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and its subsidiary, Mayo Medical Laboratories, Mayo Clinic provided Kangsheng Huanqiu with nearly 3,000 specialized testing technologies and laboratory quality management services. However, the collaboration between the two parties was limited to the field of diagnostic testing.

On August 28, 2013, it was announced that an exclusive long-term comprehensive strategic partnership had been signed with Haorensheng in China. Haorensheng Group introduced Mayo Clinic’s “Healthy Living” system to China, primarily serving corporate clients and insurance companies. As the exclusive long-term comprehensive strategic partner in China, Haorensheng gained access to Mayo Clinic’s big data infrastructure, including the “Ask Mayo” classification algorithm, the “Healthy Living” program along with its tools and knowledge base, the Mayo Health Information Repository, the Mayo Health Knowledge Base, and the Chronic Disease Management Knowledge Base. The collaboration between the two parties is focused solely on health management.

On January 21, 2015, a joint venture—Huimei Healthcare Management Co., Ltd.—was established with Hillhouse Capital Group. As a diversified platform, Huimei Healthcare’s initial business model is positioned to provide the Mayo Clinic system to hospitals and medical institutions, covering pre-consultation, in-consultation, clinical care, post-consultation health management, and referral services, while not excluding other models such as investing in or acquiring hospitals.

• Mayo Clinic Internet Healthcare Layout Map

From the above layout, it can be seen that Mayo Clinic, like other large tech giants and pharmaceutical companies, focuses on software and data platforms, hardware and investment, as well as incubators to accelerate the internetization of healthcare. However, compared to them, Mayo Clinic is different as a hospital.

For hospitals, digital transformation via the internet is ultimately aimed at enhancing the efficiency of the existing healthcare system and maximizing the utilization of current medical resources. By leveraging the open and interconnected nature of the internet, hospitals can overcome geographical constraints, thereby building bridges for communication among hospitals, between hospitals and patients, and among patients themselves.

Mayo Clinic’s ambitions appear to extend even further. For instance, by launching an accelerator, Mayo can establish a long-term network with other companies involved in the healthcare sector. Judging from its collaboration and investment targets, Mayo is simultaneously expanding its relational network while advancing its digital health initiatives. It seems poised to build a robust healthcare ecosystem; coupled with its own high-quality medical services, connecting the entire city—and indeed, the whole world—appears well within its reach.

To borrow an ill-timed metaphor: “Those who are more accomplished and better-looking than you are also working harder.” What choice do you have but to strive?