A new healthcare-medtech team-up is aiming to build high-tech imaging tools to improve disease diagnoses and patient outcomes.
Cleveland Clinic and Canon announced their partnership earlier this week at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting in Chicago.
The duo plans to establish a comprehensive imaging research center, where they’ll recruit a wide-ranging team of clinicians, researchers and engineers to help develop novel imaging technologies.
To start, the work at the center will focus on advancing preclinical imaging, human imaging and image analysis in three main areas of medicine: cardiology, neurology and musculoskeletal care.
“This unique collaboration leverages Cleveland Clinic’s expertise in biomedical research and clinical care with Canon’s global leadership in imaging innovation and precision manufacturing,” Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic, said in the joint announcement.
“By combining our strengths, we aim to create breakthroughs in imaging and work together to rapidly translate these innovations to improve patient care,” Mihaljevic continued.
The collaboration will be based in Cleveland’s Innovation District, where the Cleveland Clinic’s main campus is located and where the healthcare giant has recently opened a pair of newly remodeled research laboratories and staked its claim on space for two more state-of-the-art research buildings.
The imaging research center it’s planning with Canon may include a shared workspace in an existing location close to the main Cleveland Clinic campus, per the announcement. Though the partners didn’t specify which building they’ve set their sights on, local economic development blog NEOtrans suggested that the former headquarters of IBM’s Explorys healthcare subsidiary—which is located on Cleveland Clinic-owned land—may be the only nearby space available for such an expansion, after being vacated during the pandemic.
Canon, too, has ties to Cleveland—albeit much more recently formed ones. Late last year, the Japanese tech giant laid out plans to establish its second U.S.-based medtech subsidiary, Canon Healthcare USA, with headquarters in Cleveland.
It launched the new business in February of this year, according to this week’s announcement. The release also noted that Canon was particularly drawn to the area by the potential to collaborate with the Cleveland Innovation District, which is anchored by the city’s three largest health systems—Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and University Hospitals—plus Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University.