Health information technology is hot at Cleveland Clinic Innovations, these days.
The corporate venturing arm of the Cleveland Clinic has built operations to a crescendo in its first decade, according to Chris Coburn, executive director of the unit and the Clinic’s chief of technology commercialization.
While Coburn’s unit may be better known for spinning off medical device, drug or therapy companies, it has also launched a few health IT companies, including one that’s based on how the Clinic operates. And Coburn hinted more are coming.
Since President Barack Obama held up the Clinic as a model of delivering efficient, cost-effective care last year, lots of organizations have been watching the nation’s top heart hospital for its efficiency moves, which more and more are involving information technology.
Thanks to healthcare reform efforts — and the skyrocketing cost of care — health IT and its promise of boosting the quality of care while cutting its cost is causing a lot of commercialization heat. Coburn shared some of what Cleveland Clinic Innovations is doing to generate that heat.
Q. How does the Cleveland Clinic fit in the health IT industry?
A. We believe healthcare IT is an exploding field, but in ways that some people in this town or industry fail to appreciate. One of the reasons health IT is increasing is it’s ubiquitous in healthcare. In virtually every area of activity in an institution like this, there are at least one — and sometimes, many — IT tools you can use.
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Q. Give me an example of how Cleveland Clinic Innovations is leveraging the Clinic’s health IT experiences.
A. We are in partnership with a company backed by Carlyle Group called Carefx. This is a great story about how things are working for us right now.
So a smart group of five inventors used these tools to develop dashboards to measure a whole set of points of delivery for the institution, from quality and safety of care to patient outcomes to scheduling. These dashboards are visual and incredibly compelling.
But the dashboards were developed for internal use. So we incubated the dashboards in-house with a subsidiary company we called IntellisEPM. Intellis migrated the original application from one platform to another to make it more appropriate for the general market.
We refined the technology, got a couple of sales, and then we partnered with Carefx because that company had a large number of installed customers. And selling to an existing client is a lot easier than selling to a new one. Carefx had a product that allows a user to have multiple applications open on their system at the same time. That’s a big need in healthcare. Carefx has about 150 employees in Phoenix, Ariz.
Q. How would you describe the partnership with Carefx?
A. It’s an acquisition on their part, but it’s going to occur in stages. Last month, Carefx announced the exclusive license rights to market and further develop the Clinic’s business intelligence dashboards that are a part of Intellis, the Clinic startup. We’re in a collaborative stage where all of our dashboards are being branded as Carefx.
We’re going to overlap for about a year. Then, Carefx will absorb the Cleveland activities. Assuming that company lives up to its agreement, it will get the assets of Intellis. As a matter of fact, they have already added two employees. So, I think we’re up to about 10. So our team will become a unit of Carefx.
What will happen is there will be a division of a high-flying healthcare IT company located here in Cleveland and working closely with us. And Carefx’s team all over the world will be selling our dashboards. We’ll continue to refine some of the dashboard technology.
Q. How does the sale of an asset like IntellisEPM figure into the Clinic’s mission?
A. A couple of ways. For instance, the Carefx relationship brings with it the presence of this dynamic company in the Cleveland environment. That’s a key for long-term growth. So they get the chance to continuously interact with our people. And the presence of companies like that make us better and more innovative, which is part of the core mission of Cleveland Clinic. Shared perspectives create a lot of opportunity.
The other point is our net income gets reinvested into research, innovation and commercialization. So, you’ll see some things come out of these future transactions that will fortify the Clinic’s capabilities in those areas.
