Dr. John Halamka will join Mayo Clinic Jan. 1 to lead its new partnership with Google that aims to leverage artificial intelligence to improve healthcare.
Halamka will be leaving his post as executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Boston to join the Rochester, Minn.-based health system as the president of Mayo Clinic Platform.
Previously, he was chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for more than 20 years. The Harvard professor and emergency medicine physician has helped plan the healthcare information strategies for both the George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration.
"Dr. Halamka has a proven track record of success in innovation and value creation," Dr. Gianrico Farrugia, president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, said in a statement. "His extensive experience and network will help power the Mayo Clinic Platform forward to benefit our patients and to support Mayo Clinic's path for the future."
The Mayo Clinic Platform will house its data platform on the Google Cloud. Part of the goal is to create machine-learning models for complex diseases and share them with providers across the world.
"It's an exciting time to join Mayo Clinic and work with new colleagues to enhance what we can offer to patients worldwide," Halamka said in prepared remarks. "The Mayo Clinic Platform provides us the opportunity to shape health care in a new and dynamic way."
Data-sharing partnerships between health systems and technology companies are taking place throughout the industry. While executives promise healthcare transformation, policymakers and patients have raised data privacy concerns.
Dr. Clark Otley, professor of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science and dermatologic surgeon, was also named chief medical officer of Mayo Clinic Platform.
