Design at Mayo

The Mayo Clinic has a longstanding legacy of innovation in healthcare. Following in that tradition, Dr. Nicholas LaRusso initiated a project to explore new doctor-patient interactions by partnering with the design firm IDEO. In 2002, LaRusso, along with Dr. Michael Brennan, inaugurated the SPARC lab, a skunkworks outpatient facility where physicians and designers could experiment with healthcare delivery models.

The SPARC lab, which later evolved into the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation (CFI), aimed to improve patient outcomes and the healthcare experience by testing new processes from patient entry to follow-up care. The CFI utilized a design methodology focused on human-centered design principles. This involved cross-disciplinary collaboration between physicians and designers to create and test innovations in real-world settings.

In its short history, the CFI managed to recruit busy physicians for this novel research approach, bridge the cultural gap between medical and design professionals, conduct design experiments, and secure institutional support for unconventional methodologies. The CFI grew significantly, expanding from two to 32 full-time employees and initiating projects to improve workflow, patient education, technology usage, and exam room design. However, the CFI's leadership recognized that their innovations were incremental and expressed a desire for "transformational" change in healthcare delivery.