How AI could bring Mayo-quality health care to everyone

My wife, Autumn, has spent nearly a quarter of the past four years in ERs and hospitals, untangling and battling three chronic conditions — and a shamefully broken U.S. medical system.

We live in Washington, D.C., with top-rated hospitals in our backyard.

Yet her experience has been eye-opening and often horrifying, especially for a nation that spends twice as much on medical care as our rivals.

What it's like: ERs so hauntingly jammed she's often stacked like cargo in hallways, on a stretcher, waiting double-digit hours for care.

Well-intentioned and often talented nurses overwhelmed and overworked.

Doctors forbidden from, or uninterested in, working with experts beyond their domain to solve complex conditions.

It's random luck if you get a specialist willing to even show up to your hospital room.

You need a forensic detective to hunt down medical records scattered across random portals and hospitals.

And then a miracle to get anyone to piece them together for clues.

"It feels like riding a stationary bicycle when you need to be somewhere," Autumn says.

And we're the lucky ones, with blue-chip insurance, a sophisticated understanding of the system and resources to attack problems.

Most patients don't have those things.

All of this left us infuriated and hopeless — until we landed in a small Minnesota city and glimpsed medical nirvana: the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

It was like discovering a foreign land — or seeing a future that could and should be.