Cleveland Clinic, MedStar join forces to move medical technologies to market

The Cleveland Clinic, one of the country's most prominent medical research centers, and MedStar Health, the largest health-care provider in Maryland and the Washington region, will collaborate to bring medical inventions to market.

The alliance, which will affect technologies developed by thousands of scientists and doctors, will be the first of its kind between two large U.S. health systems, executives said. The collaboration is a response to growing pressures on health-care institutions to cut costs while finding innovative ways to improve patient health and care delivery. With improvements in electronic health records, more health systems will be turning to such collaborations to tap into the expertise of other organizations.