Platform Thinking is Transforming the Future of Healthcare

Summary

Tomorrow’s Cure – Platform Thinking is Transforming the Future of Healthcare
Mayo Clinic Podcast, August 13, 2025
Host: Kathy Werzer
Live from the Platform Med Conference, June 2025, Minneapolis

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how “platform thinking” is revolutionizing healthcare by moving from isolated, physical infrastructure and fragmented care toward global collaboration, data-sharing, and innovation. Through perspectives from Mayo Clinic leaders, clinicians, and global collaborators, the episode illustrates how a platform approach can accelerate breakthroughs, improve equity, and equip clinicians with smarter tools—while maintaining patient trust and privacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Limitations of the Traditional Healthcare Model

• Fragmentation and Physical Constraints

  • Historically, healthcare built around buildings and fixed, costly infrastructure led to imbalanced utilization (overcrowded in some places, underused in others) and made innovation hard to scale.
    • “Hospitals could be overcrowded in one region and underutilized in another, and where innovation often struggled.” – Kathy Werzer [01:02]

• Personal Stories Underscore System Gaps

  • Patients slip through cracks: protocols aren’t for individuals but for broad categories.
    • “Do you have a protocol for 50 year old Korean women who are artists and care about their hands function?” – Conference participant [00:34]
    • “Do you have a way of diagnosing stage 4 pancreatic cancer before it’s stage 4?” [00:41]
  • In rural areas or where one provider is the only option, quality and reliability are even more critical.
    • “If we fail, there's nowhere for people to go. We're the only folks in town.” – Dr. Patrick Woodard [03:59]

2. The Rise of Platform Thinking in Healthcare

• What is Platform Thinking?

  • Moving from a “pipeline” (closed-off) model to platforms: shared, open, connected resources and innovation.
    • “Platform thinking is a fresh concept where multiple organizations collaborate to co create greater value for consumers.” – Kathy Werzer [01:39]
    • Platform analogy: “taxis to Uber/Lyft.” Platforms create value by connecting users and resources—not by owning everything. [07:12]

• Mayo Clinic’s Vision

  • Challenge: “Being #1 is not enough; there is responsibility to do something transformative.”
    • “He wanted us to do something much, much more impactful… to help healthcare in a way that has never been done before.” – Dr. Clark Otley on CEO Dr. Gianrico Farrugia’s vision [05:59]
  • Use Mayo’s ethics, experience, and mission as the foundation for global collaboration.

3. Global Collaboration and Data Sharing

• Connecting Underrepresented Populations

  • Building platforms brings more representative data and more precise algorithms, benefiting global and local populations.
    • “This population is underrepresented. We understand that being part of this network will allow not only our population be better represented, but algorithms and new technologies… will be more precise and better serve our own.” – Dr. Rodrigo Demarch, Sao Paulo, Brazil [05:02]

• Necessity of Partnership

  • One institution can’t meet every need; platform enables equity and access across regions.
    • “The future of medicine can't be done alone.” – Dr. Patrick Woodard [19:41]
    • “Bidirectional reciprocity”—every platform participant both gives and receives.

4. Data, AI, and Protecting Trust

• Empowering Clinicians, Not Replacing Them

  • Key theme: AI/tools should free clinicians for ‘empathetic care,’ not diminish their role.
    • “You free up the space for the clinician to do what the human does best... empathetic care, listening, investigating further...” – Dr. Sonja Makhni [13:48]
    • “It’s not about replacing the human, it’s about how can we arm the human…” [13:48]

• Protecting the Doctor-Patient Relationship

  • Managing EHR/data smartly gives physicians more quality interaction time.
    • “The doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct. The platform enhances that relationship... helps physicians spend more quality time with the patient.” – Dr. Deepak Abraham [14:50]

• AI Needs “Speed of Trust”

  • AI only beneficial if trusted by clinicians and patients. Transparency, permissions, and traceability are essential.
    • “Healthcare moves at the speed of trust. AI will move also at the speed of trust.” – Ashima Gupta, Google [15:46]
    • “It’s not enough just to give an answer. We want to make sure that answer is pointing back to the gold set of rules.” [16:39]

• Best-in-Class Privacy and Data Security

  • Mayo developed de-identification tech: 99.9% accuracy, multiple privacy layers.
    • “We worked with one of our partners to develop technology that de-identified to 99.9% accurate... multiple layers of privacy protection beyond the deidentification.” – Dr. Clark Otley [17:14]
    • Platform Connect now links Mayo's 10 million patients to 50+ million through data sharing [18:31]

5. Platform Thinking in Action: Early Discoveries and Smarter Treatments

• Aggregated Data Informs Future Care

  • Using experience from millions of patients for smarter, earlier treatments, reducing risk.
    • “If we have millions and millions of patients’ experience in the past, should not that guide the care of patients in the future?” – Dr. John Halamka [18:51]

• Scaling World-Class Care Globally

  • Goal: “Enable 50% of global healthcare providers to benefit from Mayo’s knowledge.” [11:12]
  • Example: Hospital-at-home—30% of today’s in-hospital care can be delivered at home via virtual care.
    • “Imagine a hospital having a virtual floor on top of the current building... that virtual floor happens to be in your bedroom.” – Manish Goyal [21:36]

• Collaborate & Compete: The Ecosystem Mindset

  • Platform requires trust, openness, and shared purpose—even among competitors.
    • “When we have partners who would seemingly compete with us join because they see a greater good...” – Manish Goyal [23:02]

• Accelerating & Spreading Innovation Globally

  • Institutions share technology and research in both directions—innovation flows in and out.
    • “How can we bring our technology… to other countries?... It fosters research, it fosters innovation.” – Dr. Demarch [24:01]

6. From Pipeline to Platform: A Shift in Values and Operations

• Values-Guided Openness

  • Platform model: Open, guided by values, embedded scientific accuracy.
    • “Let’s set some rules so things happen with high degrees of accuracy, scientifically based and make sure our values are embedded...” – Dr. Clark Otley [25:18]

• A Moment of Opportunity

  • The current acceleration in healthcare technology makes now a unique turning point.
    • “I have never seen evolution of technology and ideas and businesses happen as quickly as it is now... the only way to do it is partnership and collaboration around platform thinking.” – Dr. John Halamka [26:19]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Being number one is not enough. It's a responsibility to be number one. And we can't just incrementally get a little bit better each year. We need to do something really transformative...”
  – Dr. Clark Otley [05:59]

• “Healthcare moves at the speed of trust. AI will move also at the speed of trust.”
  – Ashima Gupta [15:46]

• “The doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct... The platform enhances that relationship...”
  – Dr. Deepak Abraham [14:50]

• “If we have millions and millions of patients’ experience in the past, should not that guide the care of patients in the future?”
  – Dr. John Halamka [18:51]

• “Imagine a hospital having a virtual floor ... that virtual floor happens to be in your bedroom.”
  – Manish Goyal [21:36]

• “The future of medicine can’t be done alone... just because you live in western South Dakota doesn’t mean you need to have less equity and less access to care...”
  – Dr. Patrick Woodard [19:41]

• “Let’s open it up to the world. Everybody is just doing their part to contribute in wonderful ways... It really is about the platform. It’s about the ecosystem of people and innovators and technologies...”
  – Dr. Clark Otley [25:18]

• “You’re here to make an impact. You’re here to be part of the global transformation of health care. ...The only way to do it is partnership and collaboration around platform thinking.”
  – Dr. John Halamka [26:19]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:34 – Patient stories illustrating the limits of current healthcare
• 03:59 – Dr. Woodard on being the sole provider in a rural area
• 05:02 – Dr. Demarch on inclusivity and global data sharing
• 05:59 – Mayo Clinic’s challenge: transformation over incremental gains
• 07:12 – Manish Goyal on what a platform is (taxi/Uber analogy)
• 11:12 – Mayo’s platform goal: scale knowledge globally
• 13:48 – Dr. Makhni: platforms empower clinicians, not replace
• 14:50 – Dr. Abraham: platform enhances patient-physician time
• 15:46 – Ashima Gupta: trust is essential for AI in healthcare
• 17:14 – Dr. Otley: world-class privacy and de-identification tech
• 18:51 – Dr. Halamka: learning from aggregate patient data
• 19:41 – Dr. Woodard: shared platforms for equity
• 21:36 – Manish Goyal: hospital-at-home virtual floor
• 24:01 – Dr. Demarch: platform accelerates global/local innovation
• 25:18 – Dr. Otley: values-driven, open ecosystem vs. pipeline model
• 26:19 – Dr. Halamka: now is the moment for platform thinking and collaboration

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Conclusion

“Platform thinking” marks a pivotal shift in healthcare, emphasizing openness, shared purpose, rigorous privacy protections, and trust—powered by technology, but grounded in human values and partnerships. Mayo Clinic and its partners believe that by opening healthcare’s data and expertise to a global, collaborative ecosystem, they can accelerate innovation, personalize care, and bring world-class treatments to every corner of the globe. The message: the future of healthcare is not about working alone, but building platforms that lift everyone.

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Transcript

[A]

On his podcast chasing life. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent brings you the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet so that you can live your best life.

[B]

Are some people just born happier than others?

[A]

And what might they be doing that the rest of us aren't? Follow chasing life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Apple, Spotify, iHeart podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

My wife diagnosed with breast cancer in December of 2011 and I went to the institution, not Mayo Clinic Said do you have a protocol for 50 year old Korean women who are artists and care about their hands function? We have a protocol for women or my father in law who died of stage four pancreatic cancer. Do you have a way of diagnosing stage 4 pancreatic cancer before it's stage 4 when it's actually treatable and survival is a possibility?

[D]

Not yet.

[A]

Unfortunately, these stories reflect the current state of our healthcare system. The information doctors need sometimes just isn't there. Or sometimes discoveries and treatments contained in medical records aren't broadly shared. But what if we could shatter those healthcare silos and allow medical breakthroughs and cures to become worldwide faster than before? Hi, I'm Kathy Werzer and this is Tomorrow's Cure, a podcast from Mayo Clinic that brings the future of medicine to the present. Today's episode is a special one. It comes to you from the Platform Med Conference held in June of 2025 in downtown Minneapolis. More than 250 leaders from healthcare, government, academia and business talked about shaping the next chapter of healthcare. Hosted by Mayo Clinic, this global event explored how platform thinking is transforming clinical care. Now, platform thinking is a fresh concept where multiple organizations collaborate to co create greater value for consumers. When it comes to health care, that means accelerating innovation, empowering clinicians and expanding access to high quality care. Before we talk about what's changing, I think we need to look at where we've been. Today's breakthroughs were obviously not born in a vacuum. They emerged from a healthcare system built on buildings, physical infrastructure. There are fixed costs and a fragmented delivery model. It's been a system where hospitals could be overcrowded in one region and underutilized in another, and where innovation often struggled. To help us understand this landscape, let's turn to Manish Goyal, Chief operating Officer of Mayo Clinic Platform.

[E]

An example of this is if you think about what a hospital is, it's a physical building that is specially designed for one thing, delivering care. It has specific people, nurses, physicians, administrators, technicians, et cetera that are employed and are waiting for patient one. It has specialty equipment. So there's a lot of fixed costs to operate a hospital and to maintain it at certain level of utilization for it to be cost effective. So what's happening across the world is there are pockets of geographies that have too much demand to the hospital into full capacity. There are parts of the world that hospitals are barely able to stay alive because they're not being utilized.

[A]

That's part of the big picture, the imbalance in hospital utilization across geographies. But the reality on the ground is even more urgent when there's no backup option. Dr. Patrick Woodard, Chief information officer for Monument Health based in Rapid City, South

[F]

Dakota, explains, I practiced medicine for many years before moving into the tech side of administration. And everywhere I'd ever been before, whether it was in D.C. in Reno, Nevada, in Memphis, Tennessee, all had competition across the street, which helps you be better in some ways, but also if you fail, there's somewhere else for your patients to go. If we fail, there's nowhere for people to go. We're the only folks in town, which means that we have to be able to deliver high quality care every single time for every patient who comes in the door.

[A]

So what does it look like when that urgency goes global? Let's go from South Dakota to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein has joined a data sharing alliance with Mayo Clinic Platform Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Rodrigo Demarch lays out why inclusive research will not only give scientists a wealth of information, but also help create more tailored medicine, healthcare products and services and solutions.

[G]

This population is underrepresented. We understand that being part of this network will allow not only our population be better represented, but algorithms and new technologies that will be developed running over this data will be more precise and better serve our own. We understand there's a great opportunity there for people in other places that want to create solutions that can be deployed globally, not only locally or to certain specific populations.

[A]

Collaboration like this requires thinking differently about healthcare and the populations it serves. To understand the origin of Mayo Clinic Platform, we turn to Dr. Clark Otley, the Chief Medical Officer of Mayo Clinic Platform who was there from day one. His story begins with a challenge from Mayo Clinic's CEO. Being number one is not enough 2019

[B]

our visionary CEO, Dr. Gianrico Ferruja, came in and said, we are number one. That's not enough. And we all said, we work so hard to do this.

[G]

It's amazing.

[B]

But he wanted us to do something much, much more Impactful, actually, he said it's a responsibility to be number one. And we can't just incrementally get a little bit better each year. We need to do something really transformative and help healthcare in a way that has never been done before. And to do that, I think we need to do healthcare. We need to think about this as us, the big us, rather than just Mayo Clinic. We need to create a platform where we can create the ethics and the values and the mission of Mayo Clinic, which is trusted and respected all across the world, and use that to bring together partners and collaborators and innovators to transform healthcare.

[A]

Together, these voices paint a picture of a traditional healthcare system that couldn't scale, couldn't personalize too often, couldn't reach those who needed it the most. Before we take a closer look at how Mayo Clinic platform is transforming care today, let's hear from Manish Goyal on what Mayo Clinic platform is.

[E]

So platforms are where you have shared resources. So the example I use to make it first and foremost personal and real is taxi cabs to Uber and Lyft. That is a relatable platform business. Up until 20 years ago, you basically needed to either have a friend, your car, or you rent a car, or you take a taxi if you wanted to go somewhere that was not public transportation. Taxis were wholly owned, employed colleagues. So if I'm a yellow checkered cab service, I would employ these taxis. I would have my own fleet of cars. I would have a 1-800-number. And that's how you interact with them. So it's a very proprietary thing, very expensive, because buying cars, employing people takes a lot of money to build up. Now along comes Uber and Lyft. They don't own or operate any of these fleets. They don't employ anyone. They basically put a platform out there. It happens to be technology, but platform does not mean technology. And this particular platform connects drivers and riders together. Uber and Lyft, what they do is basically maintain an ecosystem where everybody behaves and that when you get to your destination, it's cost effective and it's convenient. That's a platform model. So now what we're trying to do with healthcare is how can we do that and how can we do that at large scale?

[A]

Earlier, we heard about the personal stakes from Dr. Halamka. Now we hear from him again, this time as he addresses conference participants about the current realities health care must confront.

[D]

I think each of you recognizes that in 2025, there are challenges, challenges of reimbursement, challenges of staffing, challenges of trainees. I think it was best said at the World Economic Forum in January of this year. If we look at the birth rates across most of our industrialized countries, they are less than replacement. And yet we have aging societies living into the 80s. But healthy years stop generally in the 60s. So that means we have 20 years of less than perfect life and perfect health. And someone is going to need to fill that gap with care. And if the birth rates are low, it isn't going to be those folks that we are training today that are going to serve the underserved and those who need the care. It's got to be platform automation, AI innovation, new care models that help us match that supply and demand. I think each of us has family members and you've probably experienced the challenge yourself. My mom passed away on March 1st of frontotemporal dementia and complications. Again, looking at the room at those who are in the sandwich generation like me, chances are you've had to serve those above you and those below you while serving your peers. And is the journey easy? Do you know how other patients and families are experiencing end of life care? Is it clear who you talk to, where you go or what treatments you try? Not at all. And this is why platform thinking, which brings together the data of the world, the innovators of the world, and providers, pharma and biopharma professionals and patients, is really the only way we're going to get that healthcare future we all want. Now how are we going to do it?

[A]

It's clear that closing these gaps requires systemic change in many areas. As Dr. Halamka said, it requires platform automation, AI innovation and new care models. And no one understands the scale and potential of platform thinking better than Manish Goyal.

[E]

That is the purpose of Mayo Clinic platform is to enable others to deliver high quality care based on what we know and have learned across 160 years. So it's about scalability. Our primary call to action is how do we enable 50% of the healthcare providers globally to benefit from Mayo Clinic so that we can impact billions of lives? That's a platform model. Now what we're trying to do with healthcare is how can we do that and how can we do that at large scale? Data certainly plays a role, but there are a lot of different things that we've thought about when it comes to platform model.

[A]

I'm Kathy Werzer and this is tomorrow's cure. We'll be back with more highlights from the Platform Ed conference. Hey, do you have about 20 minutes? I know you're busy. But what if I told you spending that time could help improve your life? That's what we aim to do on each episode of Life Kit. Evidence based tips. In about 20 minutes or less, listen to the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Now more than ever, technology is a dominating force in our lives. Then there's the threat of AI everywhere. And yet tech can be inspiring and help level playing fields. I mean, a YouTuber with a self funded debut movie just dominated the box office. I thought, hey, if you interview me,

[G]

it'd be good for your publication. And that's not ego, I just have

[D]

a lot of followers.

[A]

But it's that stigma. It's like YouTubers, they're not real. Join me Lizzie oh, the host of what Next tbd, Slate's podcast focused on technology, power and the future. Follow what Next TBD now, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kathy Werzer and this is Tomorrow's Cure, a podcast that brings the future of medicine to the present present. Before the break, we explored how Mayo Clinic Platform is enabling healthcare providers around the world to scale high quality care. But scalability also depends on data, how it's collected, protected and put to work. Let's get back into the conversation by talking about how data supports the clinicians who need it most. Here's Dr. Sonja Makhni, the medical director of Applied Informatics at Mayo Clinic Platform on what that looks like in practice.

[H]

You free up the space for the clinician to do what the human does best, which is empathetic care, listening or, you know, kind of investigating further into a problem. And that's really what I'm looking forward to a lot of these tools doing. It's really not just a tool that's going to solve a problem. It's the clinician, the care team, and the tool will solve hopefully the problem in conjunction with a patient. Humans are, you know, and we've been hearing a lot about it actually in this forum ourselves, is it's not about replacing the human, it's about how can we arm the human with the tools so they can keep performing at the top of their license.

[A]

And that's the power of alignment when human insight meets smart tools. Dr. Deepak Abraham, the chief of medical staff at King Hamad American Mission Hospital, traveled from Bahrain for the conference. He echoes that idea and reminds us why protecting time for patient interaction is so important. I want to allow my physicians to

[C]

work at the top of their license

[A]

rather than get bogged down with ehr and entry of data and you lose time. Whereas this can help physicians release themselves to patient interaction, that doctor patient relationship is sacrosanct. The platform enhances the that relationship and

[C]

helps physicians spend more quality time with

[A]

the patient, giving them quality information through the platform. And that can help build relationships better. Behind every breakthrough, there is a question of trust. Let's shift now to the role of intelligent tools and the technological standards required to earn clinical confidence. Ashima Gupta, the Global Director of healthcare strategy and Solutions from Google, shares how she sees trust driving the future of AI in healthcare.

[I]

At Google, we believe healthcare breakthroughs change the world and bring hope to humanity. And we believe AI to be one of those breakthroughs in healthcare. And for AI to be that breakthrough in healthcare, trust is paramount. We always say healthcare moves at the speed of trust. AI will move also at the speed of trust. And we have techniques. From Google perspective, we all talk about large models, then there are ways in which we ground the models to your enterprise data. It's permission aware, it knows who's calling it. And then trustworthy also means transparency, like how is the model used? And we have citation reference ability. If model is giving an answer, what is it basing it on? We hear that from clinicians, from ecologists, that it's not enough just to give an answer. We want to make sure that answer is pointing back to the gold set of rules. So that's where trust for the AI is important. Healthcare will not move if that trust is not established.

[A]

But trust just isn't theoretical, it is vital. Dr. Clark Otley explains how Mayo Clinic developed world class de identification technology to protect privacy while unlocking the full power of clinical data.

[B]

So first thing, privacy first, okay. So we wanted to assure that we did not breach anybody's privacy. So we went through and developed the world's best de identification technology. Okay, so previously if you took a healthcare record and you tried to wipe out any of the identifiers, if you were 80, 90%, that was pretty good. We said, no, that's not good enough for us. And so we worked with one of our partners to develop technology that DE identified to 99.9% accurate. So extremely high fidelity de identification. And then we developed multiple layers of privacy protection beyond the deidentification. So my medical record's in there and, and they don't know my name, they don't know who I'm married to, they don't know my address, they know I'm a man and that I've had these X, Y and Z conditions. They know what medications I'm on, but nothing that they could say, oh, that's probably Clark. But all the really good stuff that's in there, which is how have I responded to my medications, how did I do after my surgery, how have I recovered from my illness? That's all in there. When you multiply that by lots of people, that's the essence of what we need for advanced AI powered analytics,

[A]

that data protection fuels the Connect program within Mayo Clinic. Platform Connect links Mayo Clinic's 10 million patients to data from more than 50 million other patients through hospitals worldwide. And that's the impetus behind Mayo Clinic. Platform collaboration is the future. Here's Dr. Halamka.

[C]

If we have millions and millions of patients experience in the past, should not that guide the care of patients in the future? And so this data of the past has now been aggregated at Mayo Clinic for the benefit of the world to use experiences of 10 million patients just at Mayo, 15 million at Mercy and eight different international locations. Suddenly you get to a platform that helps us with early discoveries and with much more reasonable treatments that cause benefit with less risk and harm.

[A]

Here's Dr. Patrick Woodard on why no one institution can go it alone and why a platform founded on equity must guide innovation.

[F]

I think it's in the name. I mean, it's platform Ed. Right. We very much believe that the future of medicine can't be done alone. Although I mentioned that we're the sole provider in the community and we very much want to be there for a long time. We also recognize that not every single innovation is going to be being done in our backyard. Recognizing that just because you live in western South Dakota doesn't mean that you need to have less equity and less access to care than if you were to live in San Francisco or New York City. We want to make sure that we're able to take advantage of everything that's new that provides high quality care at the same time, or at least closely behind those in major hubs.

[A]

That's the promise of platform thinking, combining scale with purpose, innovation with humanity. Dr. Holamka returns now to Close the loop, showing how data from across institutions is unlocking earlier discovery, smarter treatment and care with less risk and more precision.

[C]

Well, I think we've all recognized that healthcare is a global and not local endeavor. And that is the only way we can learn is by each of us sharing openly our successes and our failures. So when we put Platform together, it was based on the idea of what we call bidirectional reciprocity, which means every organization that's part of it can interact with every other organization without barriers.

[A]

So where does healthcare go from here? Imagine hospital grade care delivered in your home. AI that personalizes your treatment. An environment where competitors become collaborators and patients everywhere, regardless of location, get world class care. It's the future under the platform model and it's already becoming a reality. Here's Manish Goyal.

[E]

So under a platform model you would shift it to make it much more on demand. An example of this is about 30% of the reasons why you're in a hospital. You can actually deliver that care in the home. We're starting to do that at Mayo Clinic is could we actually deliver the services that you would get in a hospital, but deliver it in the home? That's a platform model. Today we average about 60 patients a day who are getting cared for in their home, but as if they're connected to the hospital. Imagine a hospital having a virtual floor that's on top of the current building and you're transferred from the ED or surgery into this virtual floor. That virtual floor happens to be in your bedroom. You're connected to the hospital, so you pick up the phone and there's a physician or a nurse on the other line. You can communicate with them. You can get all the services in your home, like nutrition services, pt, ot, diagnostics, and they're delivered to you on demand. That's the future of healthcare under a platform model.

[A]

As one example, at its core, platform thinking isn't just about technology. It's about trust, transparency and working across boundaries. Goyal continues with why collaboration, not competition, is the real key to scale.

[E]

Because under a platform model you have to be willing to share. So your commitment to engaging in the platform is that you're joining an ecosystem. As part of an ecosystem, you collaborate and you compete. But you agree that by joining it there are a set of rules that you play with. So it requires a great degree of trust that the organization operating the platform, in this case us, is doing it for the right reasons. I do count it to your point to be very fortunate and it says a lot about Mayo Clinic. When we have partners who would seemingly compete with us, join because they see a greater good

[A]

and that spirit of openness has international reach. Dr. Demarche shares why entering the platform ecosystem matters not just for institutional innovation, but for connecting local and global networks, accelerating research and expanding access to technology across borders.

[G]

It is important for many reasons. The first one because allow us to get connected with leading healthcare organizations around the world, exchange knowledge between us. Also because it Allow us to learn what these other organizations are doing in terms of adopting new technologies around building a platform wide perspective on how to work between each other, but also how to connect locally with our own network. It is important in many ways also because it fosters research, it fosters innovation, how to bring innovation developed in other places to our home and the other way around. How can we bring our technology, the technology that we have been developing in house or within our startups ecosystem, to other countries? There are many ways to measure why it is important for ourselves.

[A]

Let's take it one step further. As we said at the beginning of this episode, healthcare operated in a pipeline model. Closed off, siloed, cautious. But as Dr. Ottley explains, the platform model invites openness guided by values and scientific integrity. It's about a shared ecosystem where every contributor plays a role and use that

[B]

to bring together partners and collaborators and innovators to transform healthcare. And we're gonna do that in a platform model. And a platform model's different than what we'd ever or previously. It's called the pipeline model. We do everything ourselves, we control everything ourselves. We collaborate, but we collaborate cautiously. And the platform model is let's open things up and yes, let's set some rules so that things happen with high degrees of accuracy, scientifically based and make sure our values are embedded in the processes. But let's open it up to the world. Everybody is just doing their part to contribute in wonderful ways. That's getting back to the essence of it. It really is about the platform. It's about the ecosystem of people and innovators and technologies that will bring this all together.

[A]

To bring this episode full circle, here's Dr. Halamka with a powerful reflection on why this moment in healthcare isn't just a turning point, it's a chance to lead a global transformation of healthcare.

[D]

I would tell you that in my almost 50 years of working at the intersection of technology and healthcare, I have never seen evolution of technology and ideas and businesses happen as quickly as it is now. So you're here to make a difference. You're here to make an impact. You're here to be part of global transformation of health care. And you're here at a time where the only way to do it is partnership and collaboration around platform thinking.

[A]

Thank you so much for joining us for just a glimpse into some of the Discussions at the 2025 Platform Ed Conference in Minneapolis. And that is a wrap of season three of tomorrow's Cure. My gosh, we covered a lot this season. We've heard about the latest advances in detecting Alzheimer's and Lyme disease, efforts to better predict the chances of developing cancer and getting cancer care at home. We also explored how technology can work with the human body through wearable tech and brain computer interfaces. It was fascinating this season. Join us next season for more episodes about what's happening at the forefront of medical innovation. Tomorrow's Cure is a co production of Mayo Clinic and prx. Our producers are Deborah Balthazar and David Newtown. The show is edited by Genevieve Sponsler. Our sound engineer is Tommy Bazarian. Our theme was composed and produced by Terence Bernardo. Tony Carlson is our Production Manager and our executive producers Jocelyn Gonzalez. The Mayo Clinic production team includes Pui Hong Ang, Margaret Shepard, Samantha Clarkson and Kara Mangold. Special thanks to Preston Spire for audio visual production support. Be sure to follow Tomorrow's Cure wherever you get your podcasts guests. I'm your host Kathy Werzer. Thank you so much for listening.