Cleveland Clinic innovation alliance licenses first product

A device that could make it easier for patients with severe lung and neuromuscular diseases to breathe is one step closer to becoming a reality, thanks to Cleveland Clinic's technology-focused alliance seeking to promote the next greatest innovation.

Medstar Health, in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic Innovations, has penned a deal with InnoVital Systems of Beltsville, Md., to license patent rights for InVent Diaphragm Assist Device (DAD), an implanted device that would mechanically assist the diaphragm to facilitate breathing, according to a release. The device is expected to improve the quality of life for critically ill patients.

The deal is the result of a Healthcare Innovation Alliance between Medstar Health and Cleveland Clinical Innovations, the first of its kind when launched two years ago but now one of six such alliances in the U.S. The alliance brings together healthcare providers, universities and corporate partners to promote innovations to improve patient care.

Inventor William Krimsky, MD, director of the Center for Interventional Pulmonology at MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center in Baltimore, initially introduced the innovation to MedStar’s Inventor Services, which then put him in touch with engineers at InnoVital. Working together, they realized that InnoVital’s artificial muscle technology, which has been used in the defense industry to control helicopter blades and move a robot’s mechanical arms, could serve as the foundation for the device.

“One of the foundational principles behind the creation of the MedStar Institute for Innovation is that a tremendous amount of creative and intellectual capital exists throughout MedStar Health. The Healthcare Innovation Alliance that we formed with the Cleveland Clinic enables us to tap into the core of that great energy and unleash it,” Mark S. Smith, MD, director of MedStar Institute for Innovation, said in a statement. “This important milestone of licensing the rights to the diaphragmatic assist device, an invention which has real potential to substantively improve the lives of innumerable patients, is confirmation that MedStar made the right bet.”