Cleveland Clinic and Khosla Ventures announced this week a strategic collaboration bringing the venture capital firm’s portfolio companies into clinical care.
The arrangement would span technologies at all stages, giving Khosla’s companies a leg up on areas like clinical validation and commercial adoption. To do so, the health system has entered customer agreements and commercial relationships with the companies, and is “currently evaluating several others for potential commercial partnerships, investments and co-development opportunities,” according to a release describing the partnership.
For the Cleveland Clinic, the arrangement offers an injection of new technologies spanning AI, digital health, therapeutics and diagnostics. These tools could help the organization automate its workflows and personalize care treatments while extending access, the partners said.
“Khosla Ventures invests in early, bold and impactful ideas that help people get healthy, stay healthy, and live longer,” Hal Paz, M.D., operating partner at Khosla Ventures, said in the announcement. “AI is the most transformative technology of our lifetime, and its impact on healthcare will be massive. This relationship with Cleveland Clinic—one of the most respected health institutions in the world— gives our companies an advantage to validate and scale their innovations.”
Also on the table will be the development of new value-based care strategies focused on Medicare, Medicaid and dual-eligible populations, as well as explorations of care delivery models like global second-opinion programs or home-based delivery of services, they said.
Further, the partners said that budding innovations and research currently bubbling within the organization could find their way into the commercialization pipeline and lead to the creation of new companies. There’s also potential for the organizations to jointly incubate a new company, for which Khosla would lead technical development and recruiting and the Cleveland Clinic would provide a clinical testing ground and scaling.
“This collaboration pairs our health system’s expertise in biomedical research, clinical care and innovation with Khosla Ventures’ venture expertise and network of entrepreneurs to drive meaningful advancements in the healthcare industry,” Geoff Vince, chief of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, said in the announcement. “Together we aim to accelerate transformational innovation, foster groundbreaking technologies and ultimately improve patient outcomes.”
Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the system’s innovation wing, has since 2000 helped inventors license more than 900 products and launch more than 100 spinoff companies. Khosla Ventures has been a prolific name in health tech investment, with portfolio companies spanning digital health, medtech, diagnostics and therapeutics.