Bringing design process to healthcare. Mayo innovated the delivery model with "integrated group practice" 100 years ago. Dr. LaRusso is now changing the way Mayo innovates. He opened Mayo's new Center for Innovation in June 2008 with a distinguishing characteristic: he recruited full-time designers to his 40-person staff. Now industrial designers, product designers, graphic designers and process gurus--types who wear black and typically seek gigs at Frog or IDEO--work in a studio on the ward floor alongside the doctors and nurses. This is so they can move more quickly through the iteration, prototyping and test phases of their ideas. One outcome: a pilot for "asynchronous e-consults," or web consultations between doctors. (Asynchronous means not "real time"; a synchronous version is coming.) It's Mayo's take on American Well, but communication is doctor-to-doctor, not doctor-to-patient, and it benefits from being woven into Mayo's integrated care. Importantly, LaRusso also tested e-consult with some non-Mayo doctors in Duluth, a sign Mayo plans to begin exporting its innovations. LaRusso received hundreds of resumes "from the most elite design schools" for a single job post this spring. It is heartening that creatives who might have sought to serve Apple or Nike, are choosing to employ their talents to healthcare. Creating the opportunity for them to do so is an innovation, too. And unlike other of Mayo's innovations, this one is transferrable. A gastroenterologist trained at Mayo, Dr. LaRusso is also the Charles H. Weinman Endowed Professor of Medicine a Distinguished Investigator of the Mayo Foundation.