About
For more than 150 years, Mayo Clinic has pursued solutions to the problems that exist in health care delivery, seeking continuous improvements in health and health care. The organization's ability to meet this goal stems from the research it conducts — in close alignment with the medical practice — to address patients' unmet needs.
As a research center fully embedded in the medical practice, the Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery is uniquely positioned to advance Mayo Clinic's history of taking a scientific approach to health care delivery. The center creates and evaluates data-driven solutions that transform the health care experience. Its research drives the continuous improvement necessary for safe and reliable provision of evidence-based, high-quality care.
Today's research underpins tomorrow's practice
In the Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, every project is inspired by real-world challenges experienced by Mayo's patients and health care professionals. And every solution is designed and tested with an eye to future value.
Across Mayo Clinic's medical practice, multidisciplinary teams work together to identify today's most pressing concerns and those predicted to be priorities tomorrow. When researchers generate new knowledge and identify potential improvements, center experts collaborate with clinical colleagues to apply this knowledge to routine practice, leading to higher value care for patients at Mayo Clinic and everywhere.
Capabilities of unique depth and breadth
The Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery uses its strong and diverse expertise to translate ideas and findings into real-world applications.
Within the center, experts come together from across a range of fields, including:
- Applied operations research.
- Artificial intelligence and data science.
- Clinical outcomes evaluation.
- Comparative effectiveness research.
- Diversity science.
- Economics and cost analysis.
- Ergonomics and human factors engineering.
- Health care policy.
- Health communication.
- Health services research.
- Human-centered design.
- Human-computer interaction.
- Implementation and evaluation science.
- Industrial and management systems engineering.
- Knowledge synthesis.
- Pragmatic trials.
- Qualitative and mixed methods research.
- Quality measurement research.
- Secondary data analysis.
- Social and behavioral science.
These experts support or lead investigations with clinicians across the Mayo Clinic enterprise. For example:
- One team led the COVID-19 modeling that helped Mayo respond nimbly to changing staffing, personal protective equipment and other supply needs, and intensive care unit capacity as the different variants moved across the country.
- Other researchers analyze mental and physical workloads, ergonomics, and potential interventions to ensure that surgeons and surgical team members are safe and healthy. This allows the teams to continue to provide high-quality surgical care with the safety and reliability expected at Mayo Clinic.
- Some of the center's team members spend time designing novel ways to analyze and present data that helps clinicians provide up-to-date, individualized care.
Read more about these initiatives, and many others, in the research activities pages.
The Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery's scientific faculty has its academic home in the Division of Health Care Delivery Research, where faculty members can focus on scientific success and scholarly advancement.
The center's education and training program sponsors various platforms from which to share findings and innovations. It is also responsible for numerous internships, fellowships and scholar programs.
All center programs and staff have a common thread — an unwavering commitment to supporting Mayo Clinic's medical practice by creating and sustaining a high-quality, affordable, seamless patient experience, provided by a healthy and happy workforce.