Cleveland Clinic, Canon to establish medical imaging research center

Dive Brief:

Cleveland Clinic and multinational imaging company Canon are partnering to research and develop new imaging and healthcare IT technologies, the companies announced on Monday.
The partnership between the academic medical center and Japan-based Canon will include creating a comprehensive imaging research center in Cleveland.
Joint research projects will focus on pre-clinical imaging, human imaging and image analysis in the clinical areas of cardiology, neurology and musculoskeletal medicine, per the release.

Dive Insight:

The new partnership between Cleveland Clinic and Canon comes as the healthcare industry grapples with new-age technologies like artificial intelligence. Imaging is seen as one logical area of application in the near term, given algorithms can be trained on reams of available data.

Studies suggest that AI may improve the accuracy of cancer screening, for example, while reducing workload on radiologists, though experts caution AI may not be ready to be used as an autonomous diagnostic tool.

Marrying Cleveland Clinic’s biomedical research and clinical care experience with Canon’s imaging and precision manufacturing abilities should help the two “create breakthroughs in imaging,” Tom Mihaljevic, Cleveland Clinic CEO and president, said in a statement.

Cleveland Clinic did not respond to questions on how much it’s investing in the co-development deal with Canon.

The clinic has been helping the state of Ohio steadily build out the Cleveland Innovation District, a $500 million public-private partnership designed to accelerate research and create jobs.

Since 2021, Cleveland Clinic has partnered with regional universities and hospitals to create 1,000 new jobs and open a new research center to store biologic samples. Cleveland Clinic also made a deal with IBM to install quantum computers on its campus.

The Cleveland Innovation District is one reason Canon elected to build its U.S. healthcare subsidiary in the city earlier this year as the company looks to grow its medical business, according to the release.

It’s not Canon’s first partnership with a U.S. healthcare system to look into new technologies: The company has been researching healthcare optics with Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham Women’s Hospital for 10 years.