Dive Brief:
- The Cleveland Clinic has spun off a new venture designed to capture and commercialize healthcare innovation within its own institution, in its spin-offs and at other academic medical centers with which it partners.
- Adeo LLC will officially launch in December, though some of the products that will be available through the site are already being commercialized. But the idea behind Adeo is to help the clinic and its partners distribute useful technologies that might have fallen by the wayside.
- The Clinic is already getting calls about one innovation, a tool that Clinic nurses use to predict whether a cancer patient is at risk of a fall. Also, the Clinic has gotten lots of inquiries about its MyFamily software, which allows patients to fill out their medical histories on tablet computer—in the doctor's office or online at home—before they arrive for care.
Dive Insight:
Traditionally, developing and commercializing new technologies was the task of academic medical centers, which distributed the technologies as a means of adding to their revenues. Increasingly, however, non-academic providers are taking it upon themselves to develop new technology too, largely to improve their own operations—though they may commercialize their discoveries as well.
The American Hospital Association is encouraging hospitals to create centers of excellence and other health IT development programs, as well as building publicity for those that already have such programs in place. (The AHA profiles several dozen hospitals and regional healthcare groups that are working on capitalizing on health IT and healthcare innovation.)
What's particularly promising about many of these hospital programs is that they are structured to cultivate and commercialize employee ideas, not just those that arise in a lab. This approach is likely to foster an environment in which new ideas about technology and care flourish.