Just as Mayo Clinic transformed clinical care, the Berg Innovation Exchange extends that legacy—bringing the Mayo Clinic model of healthcare innovation to life by connecting innovators with world-class tools, expertise, and resources to accelerate impactful healthcare solutions and ensure breakthrough innovations reach patients faster and at scale.
Our Story
The Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange was established with a core belief: every healthcare innovation, irrespective of its source, merits an equitable opportunity to flourish.
To answer these challenges, the Berg Innovation Exchange serves as a platform designed to remove barriers and accelerate the journey from concept to real-world impact. Since its inception, the Exchange has been dedicated to democratizing healthcare innovation—ensuring that the best ideas connect with the right resources, expertise, and opportunities more efficiently.
Innovation is embedded in Mayo Clinic’s DNA. Through the Berg Innovation Exchange, the key elements of success for healthcare innovators are brought to light—whether they are in the earliest stages of discovery or scaling a breakthrough solution. By fostering a collaborative environment that brings together Mayo Clinic’s internal expertise with external entrepreneurs, startups, and industry leaders, the exchange is not just enabling progress—it is reshaping the future of healthcare innovation.
The Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange is more than a platform; it is a catalyst for possibility, empowering the next generation of healthcare pioneers. Together, bold ideas are becoming reality, sustainable pathways to success are being built, and healthcare is being transformed for the better.
Mayo Model of Care for Healthcare Innovation
Mayo Clinic
Model of Care
Model of Care
Berg Innovation Exchange Model of Healthcare Innovation
Recognized globally as a destination for advanced care, Mayo Clinic connects patients with expert, multidisciplinary teams and world-class diagnostic and treatment resources.
Our Vision
The Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange is a pioneering platform dedicated to addressing healthcare's most pressing unmet needs by refining and accelerating transformative ideas into scalable solutions. The exchange ensures that innovations align with real-world challenges and are prepared for funding, validation, testing, and implementation.
Operating independently yet synergistically with Mayo Clinic's entities, the Berg Innovation Exchange serves as a philanthropically supported bridge between groundbreaking innovation and tangible healthcare impact. It is uniquely positioned in a connected ecosystem that brings together innovators, researchers, investors, founders, healthcare leaders and governments under a shared mission to turn visionary ideas into impactful solutions that improve lives worldwide.
Our Pillars
- Needs-Driven Innovation
- Enablement and Specificity
- Patient Centered
- Global Access
- Effective Solutions
Needs-Driven Innovation
Every initiative begins with a deep understanding of the most pressing healthcare challenges, ensuring that solutions are purpose-built to address real-world needs with precision.Enablement and Specificity
The Berg Innovation Exchange partners with critical subject matter experts to offer experience sandboxes around the world in the development of highly specific, targeted, innovations that are best in class.Patient Centered
Rooted in Mayo Clinic’s values, the Berg Innovation Exchange places patient outcomes at the heart of every effort. We orchestrate multidisciplinary teams of experts that collaborate to refine ideas and prepare them for successful pathways to impact.Global Access
Supported by philanthropic funding, the Berg Innovation Exchange operates with impartiality, ensuring equal opportunities for all innovators and stakeholders, with an emphasis on addressing healthcare needs over individual or institutional interests.Effective Solutions
By blending Mayo Clinic’s clinical expertise with the Berg Innovation Exchange’s mission of neutrality, the platform ensures transformative ideas are brought to patients faster and with greater effectiveness through a flywheel effect of intelligence and trust.Gilchrist and Amy Berg
Since the founding of the Mayo Clinic Innovation Exchange in 2019, Gilchrist and Amy Berg have been steadfast champions of its mission. Their visionary leadership, unwavering advocacy and generous commitments created a strong foundation that fueled the program’s early momentum, growth and enduring success.
With their recent transformational gift — naming and endowing the Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange — Gilchrist and Amy have deepened a decades-long relationship with Mayo Clinic, rooted in their experiences as grateful patients and nurtured by a shared belief in Mayo’s mission, values and global potential for medical innovation. This investment reflects the Bergs’ profound commitment to advancing innovation now and securing a platform for medical breakthroughs for generations to come.
Gilchrist Berg, a Princeton University graduate and founder of Water Street Capital, is widely respected as both a financial industry leader and dedicated philanthropist. After earning his B.A. in economics, he began his career in real estate finance before serving as vice president at Kidder Peabody. In 1987, he founded Water Street Capital, a Jacksonville-based investment management firm. A year earlier, in 1986, he established the Berg Family Foundation to leverage his success in support of meaningful, lasting change.
Amy Berg, president of the Berg Family Foundation, shares Gilchrist’s passion for transformative impact. With a distinguished career in public administration and nonprofit leadership, she currently chairs the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville and recently concluded a seven-year term as president of The Better Angels Society, where she championed excellence in historical storytelling through public media. Under her leadership — and with the Bergs’ generous support — the society played a vital role in bringing Ken Burns’ 2018 PBS documentary “The Mayo Clinic: Faith – Hope – Science” to national audiences, deepening public understanding of Mayo’s mission and legacy.
“Mayo is a treasure — not just to Florida, but to the nation and the world,” Gilchrist affirms. “Amy and I feel incredibly fortunate to be involved with the Mayo Clinic Innovation Exchange at such a pivotal time. We see this as an opportunity to support something unique and world renowned that will positively impact lives across the globe.”
Their significant support includes the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville, the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville University, and the University of North Florida. Additionally, Gilchrist is heavily involved with Princeton University in various capacities.
Mayo Clinic is deeply grateful to Gilchrist Berg for his extraordinary generosity and partnership. Through the Mayo Clinic Berg Innovation Exchange, his family legacy will continue to inspire transformative ideas, accelerate global collaboration, and extend Mayo Clinic’s tradition of innovation — benefiting patients worldwide for generations to come.
It is a great thing to make scientific discoveries of rare value, but it is even greater to be willing to share these discoveries and to encourage other workers in the same field of scientific research.
- William J. Mayo, M.D.