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AI and Digital Health
From fear to a phone call in 2 hours, breast cancer patient gets care faster with the help of intelligent automation
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When Karen Koellner reached for her phone charger while in bed one night, she felt pain. Curious, she got up and went to her bathroom mirror to check — and her instinct told her something was definitely wrong. She found a lump in her armpit and knew it might be cancer.
The next day, she called her doctor, who referred her to Mayo Clinic's Arizona campus. Fear set in as she expected to wait days before getting an appointment.
Instead, she received a call within two hours.
Manual processes and paperwork are often part of healthcare, but these tasks can take valuable time away from patient care. They can also delay care for patients who need it most.
That is beginning to change.
Intelligent automation helps Mayo Clinic move faster and smarter. A new automation initiative is already improving the experience for patients like Karen, who was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. An intelligent referral processing system flagged her case as urgent based on clinical patterns, prompting staff to reach out right away. Her appointments were scheduled across multiple specialties the next day, with care teams coordinating across states, disciplines and workflows.
"Being seen by an oncologist quickly was important to me," Karen says. "I was able to move forward with a treatment plan rather than waiting and worrying about the unknown."
The automated document referral system was developed at Mayo Clinic to triage incoming patient referrals using generative artificial intelligence (AI) in place of faxes, which had to be processed by hand. By eliminating one of the most time-consuming administrative workflows, the system shortens referral timelines and strengthens coordination across care teams. That means staff can spend more time focused on patients — and anxious patients like Karen experience less of a wait during the critical time between diagnosis and their first appointment.
"That is a crucial time period for patients with serious and complex medical conditions, when every moment truly matters," says Erin Layman, operations manager for Hematology and Medical Oncology at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. "It's important to have an intelligent system that can pull information from multiple documents, summarize it and allow staff to quickly review for accuracy. That helps move high-risk patients through the process much faster."
Karen calls it a game-changer in healthcare.
"Automation for patients with time-sensitive, critical diseases such as cancer has the potential to save lives by getting treatment plans started as soon as possible," she says.
The system, used in multiple departments across Mayo Clinic, worked to Karen’s advantage. Now finished with her treatment, she says she's feeling much better and is grateful to be cancer-free.
