Two Cleveland medical research hotshots are teaming up in the lucrative quest to prevent traumatic brain, neck and spine injuries and create new strategies for concussion recovery, diagnosis and prevention.
The Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University will form the Cleveland Traumatic Neuromechanics Consortium, the institutions announced Friday, pairing the Clinic’s talent in medical research, imaging tools and patient care with Case’s engineering expertise, especially in the area of neurology. It will focus on collision injuries from sports, military and automobile accidents.
The Cleveland Clinic was ranked the sixth best hospital in the country for neurology and neurosurgery by U.S. News last year, and it already has a lot brewing in the area of traumatic brain injury. Researchers are developing a biomarker blood test and an iPad2 app that are aimed at identifying concussions in football players, and a mouthguard that could measure the impact of blows to the head among athletes.
The partnership could help the Clinic gain ground in this area on other institutions known for their neurology programs like Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic, which announced in 2010 it would work with Intel Corp. to develop computer simulations for assessing the risk of head injuries.
Northeast Ohio also has a variety of companies working on technology for neurological injuries, including high-profile company Athersys, which is developing a regenerative medicine technique called MultiStem for treatment of traumatic brain injury. Cleveland-based Life Core Technologies is also developing a medical device to cool the brain of patients who sustain brain trauma.
By Deanna Pogorelc MedCity News
Deanna Pogorelc is a Cleveland-based reporter who writes obsessively about life science startups across the country, looking to technology transfer offices, startup incubators and investment funds to see what’s next in healthcare. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ball State University and previously covered business and education for a northeast Indiana newspaper.More posts by Author
Deanna, Interesting article - From what I've read from various sources, a large majority of traumatic brain injuries stem from incidents around sports, military and automobile accidents. Wouldn't it be something if an iPad app could identify an otherwise 'invisible' injury immediately? Outside of the obvious dramatic Star Trek like ability to diagnose this in realtime (is my inner geek showing?) this is HUGE. One statistic I read (see "The Silent Epidemic: Understanding the Impact of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury – Part I: Identification & Diagnosis" here: http://www.brookhavenhospital.com/seminars/the-silent-epidemic-understanding-the-impact-of-mild-traumatic-brain-injury-part-i-identification-diagnosis/ ) mentions that "Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) involves approximately 1 million people each year, most of which do not seek immediate medical attention." This was mostly due to the fact that they weren't able to identify the issue. That means 1 million people out that could be operating heavy machinery and endangering themselves. Shivers...