AKRON, Ohio — On its first anniversary, the BioInnovation Institute in Akron added “Austen” to its name, recognizing internationally renown heart surgeon and retiring Knight Foundation Chairman Dr. W. Gerald Austen and his wife Patricia R. Austen.
Though Dr. Austen, who retired as chief of surgical services at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital in 1997, steps down from leadership of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, he continues as the Edward D. Churchill Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General.
The Knight Foundation last year made a $20 million grant to the emerging institute, acting as a catalyst to gain an additional $60 million — including $20 million from the Ohio Board of Regents, Ohio Department of Development and Ohio Third Frontier — in funding for its Sept. 14, 2008, launch. “Dr. Gerry Austen led this collective effort, bringing everybody together,” said Marc Fest, the foundation’s vice president of communications.
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“Naming the bioinnovation institute after the Austens highlights our commitment to the institute and to the cause of creating transformational change in the City of Akron,” said Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of the foundation, in a written statement.
Five Akron-area institutions – Akron Children’s Hospital, Akron General Health System, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), Summa Health System and the University of Akron — launched the institute to pioneer next-generation medical innovations that could transform their city’s economic future. The founders’ long-term goal is to build the institute into a full-fledged academic health center.
The institute’s stated mission: “We are dedicated to becoming a global leader in biomaterial and medical research, education, clinical services and commercialization; and a driver of transformative economic, social and health benefits for Greater Akron.”
In its first year, the institute has:
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- Hired its first president and CEO, Dr. Frank L. Douglas, a health care, pharmaceutical research and biotechnology veteran who founded and formerly directed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center of Biomedical Innovation.
- Landed as board members Dr. Aaron Lazare (pdf), Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor in Medical Education and professor of psychiatry at University of Massachusetts Medical School, the academic medical center after which the Akron institute is modeled, and Dr. Victor Goldberg, professor and chairman of the Department of Orthopaedics at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland.
- Launched five centers of excellence, and appointed a director for one of the centers — Holly Gerzina, who is executive director of the Wasson Center for Clinical Skills at NEOUCOM, who is leading the Center for Health Care Training.
- Helped partner institutions win $10 million in grants for the centers of excellence.
- Helped partner institutions attract 14 new academic and clinical researchers, with the potential for 50 more hires at the partner institutions and the bioinnovation institute.
It’s been an interesting year, said William Considine, chairman and chief executive of Akron Children’s Hospital and a leader in the bioinnovation institute. “It’s been rewarding for us to see the collaboration, the power of that collaboration, the innovative thought and the enthusiasm that is ever-present in these conversations,” Considine said.
The institute’s centers span a continuum that starts with biomaterial and medical research and discovery — initially in orthopedics and wound healing, said Tom Strauss, Summa’s CEO — and ends with health care delivery. “Improving health care in our community” for all its residents is one of the institute’s main goals, said Dr. Lois Nora, president dean of NEOUCOM.
The institute’s work can be transformative for the community in terms of the medical technology it discovers and commercializes, for its novel education and training for health care professionals, and for its hoped-for economic impact of jobs and revenue-creation.
Institute founders also are trying to forge a national model of collaboration in medical innovation in what Douglas calls the “pre-competitive space” among institutions that often compete with each other as health care providers.
