NASA joins Cleveland Clinic Innovations

NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI) have entered into a joint collaboration that will bring NASA’s renowned aeronautics and spaceflight engineering expertise to CCI’s Global Healthcare Innovations Alliance.

The entities will work together to identify, prioritize, develop and commercialize technologies in Glenn’s portfolio that can be applied to healthcare, according to a release.

As a member of the Global Healthcare Innovations Alliance, Glenn’s researchers, engineers and developers will have access to Cleveland Clinic Innovations’ resources, which will help facilitate the discovery and development of patient-benefiting technologies.

“NASA Glenn’s research extends well beyond our aeronautics and spaceflight missions to the field of human health,” said Glenn’s Director Jim Free. “By providing a pathway that will benefit the greater medical community, the Cleveland Clinic and the Alliance has opened a door to decades of NASA technological expertise that keeps humans safe on Earth and in space.”

Glenn will also be a part the Alliance’s nationwide network that currently includes hospital systems, universities, institutions and industry partners that are all looking to share innovation resources and leverage CCI’s commercialization expertise.

The collaboration stems from Glenn’s desire to develop a medical technology portfolio based on research from its longstanding aerospace missions. While NASA has a long history of pushing its industrial innovations to the commercial market, the organization has typically had limited resources to pursue healthcare sector opportunities.