Big Think

Question: What initiatives are you working on at Mayo?

Nicholas LaRusso: We now have active pilot projects testing the ability to provide what we call eConsoles, or virtual consoles, electronically to providers all over the country, primary care providers. We believe that the initial effort should not be directly to patients but the patients to their primary care provider because we think that patients are ultimately going to need a continuous relationship with a team of providers in their own community. That’s a second initiative that we have. It’s something called the Advanced Medical Home where we’re organizing teams of providers to maintain a continuous relationship with patients within their community.

The third initiative, that gets to the genetic profiling, is we’re trying to understand through designer-centered research. This is available commercially. There are three companies out there that will provide you with a genetic analysis if you provide them with the biological specimen, whether it’s a blood sample or a spit sample or a hair sample. We’re trying to find out what do patients expect when they do this, and when they get the information that says they have, based on your genetic profile, 40% increased chance of getting type II diabetes or threefold increase in the chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease. How do they understand that? How does that affect the way they think about their health? What do they do with that information? What do the primary care providers that they may go to with that information, how do they understand it? How does this affect their ability to modify their lifestyle? And so, that will be a third concrete project that we’re engaged in.

Recorded on: June 24, 2009.