Mayo Clinic Pairs with Amazon, Epic

In the past week, the Mayo Clinic announced a pair of partnerships with major tech companies to expand the reach of its medical knowledge further.

First, the company will pair with electronic health record (EHR) giant Epic to integrate the Ask Mayo Clinic symptom assessment tool into Epic’s MyChart app and portal. According to Mayo’s statement, Ask Mayo Clinic is based on real-time data uploaded by patients, which is digested by 36 algorithms to assess hundreds of common symptoms. The health system claims that it is “not a symptom checker that leaves users guessing.”

“Care guidance, based on the user’s selection of symptoms and responses to relevant questions, includes more information about possible causes tied to the symptoms, and, in most cases, provides recommendations on home care in non-emergent situations,” Sandhya Pruthi, a physician and also associate medical director of Mayo Clinic Global Business Solutions, said in the statement. “We are pleased to work with Epic on offering easy-to-access, self-service symptom assessment to patients.”

Epic is one of the largest EHR providers, and tens of millions of patients worldwide have a record in their systems. According to a 2017 KLAS report, it holds over a quarter of the United States market share for EHRs in acute care hospitals.

Going from one of the largest EHR companies to one of the largest companies period, Mayo Clinic also announced a collaboration that will add its insights as a feature for Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices.

Mayo First Aid will allow owners of the online retail giant’s talking cylinders, like the Echo, to ask questions about basic medical situations, like burns and fevers. Pruthi highlighted the Clinic’s “trusted, evidence-based health guidance” and the convenience of voice-enabled technology as the benefits the feature will bring to all Alexa users.

The statement announcing that partnership does, however, say that the feature “should not be used if a person is in a life-threatening or emergency medical situation. In those situations, individuals should seek immediate medical assistance.”

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