Devices & Diagnostics, Hospitals, Pharma

Obesity & diabetes take center stage at Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovations Summit

This year’s Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovations Summit will pick up right where last year’s left […]

This year’s Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovations Summit will pick up right where last year’s left off.

Last year, the Clinic put at the top of its annual Top 10 Medical Innovations list bariatric surgery for treatment of diabetes as the advancement most likely to change medicine over the next year. So it’s no surprise that this year’s summit, which runs Monday through Wednesday, will focus on healthcare industry trends around obesity, diabetes and the metabolic crisis.

Dr. Philip Schauer, the director of the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Clinic, was the lead researcher on a key study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year on bariatric surgery and type 2 diabetes. He’ll likely be a prominent voice at this year’s summit, in addition to the health system’s media darling CEO Toby Cosgrove

Naturally, we can expect some showing off of the Clinic’s doctors, research and innovation efforts.  But it’s also bringing in a well-rounded set of speakers and panelists including medical device and pharmaceutical industry executives, investors, startups, analysts and clinicians. One particularly interesting panel on the state of healthcare innovations includes the CEOs of Cardinal Health, AstraZeneca, WellPoint and the Clinic as well as partners from Foundation Medical Partners and GE Ventures.

Two features added this year also bring startup companies into the mix in a big way. The first is the New Ventures Healthcare Challenge, presented in collaboration with StartUp Health. Eleven emerging companies including AdhereTech, Force Therapeutics and QMedic will present to a rather intimidating panel of judges including Esther Dyson and the clinic’s CIO, Dr. Martin Harris.

There’s also a showcase of wellness and diabetes-focused startups on Tuesday that will be getting feedback from a panel of investors and executives.

The summit will close out Wednesday with an update on the ongoing IBM Watson project at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that everything will be happening at Cleveland’s new convention center, which is attached to the medical mart-turned-Global Center for Health Innovation that opened this week. The Clinic, along with GE Healthcare, HIMSS and several other notable companies have all taken out space there.

Check back next week for live coverage from the event. I’ll also be tweeting (@deannajour231) using the hashtag #MIS2013 if you’d like to follow along.

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