World-Renowned Cleveland Clinic Turns to AlixPartners to Identify Top 10 Medical Innovations
CLEVELAND (October 11, 2007) – When the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, ranked one of the top three hospitals in America by U.S. News & World Report, announced last week (Oct. 3) that its “Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2008” was compiled with the help and expertise of AlixPartners LLP, the global management advisory firm, it surprised a few people. After all, AlixPartners is probably best-known for its work over the years in the field of corporate turnaround, having helped restructure such big names as Kmart Corp., WorldCom Inc. and Refco Inc. and, currently, Dana Corp., Dura Automotive Systems Inc. and Calpine Corp. However, the firm also boasts a deep and growing expertise in helping healthy companies improve their bottom lines, including healthcare-related ones.
The list of breakthrough innovations unveiled during Cleveland Clinic’s annual Medical Innovation Summit included therapies for valve-related heart disease, unusually high cholesterol and severe neurological disorders -- technologies that, according to a Cleveland Clinic press release, “will likely have a big impact on healthcare in 2008.”
For its part, AlixPartners designed and led a process to evaluate the opinions of more than 50 Cleveland Clinic physicians and researchers pertaining to approximately 100 innovative technologies originally under review. AlixPartners then worked with leaders and thought leaders at the Clinic to winnow the field down to about 30 actual nominees, and prepared research on each nominee and then worked closely with the Clinic’s thought leaders to develop a consensus on the ten leading technologies.
“AlixPartners is honored to have been chosen by the Cleveland Clinic, for the second year running, to lend its expertise to helping both identify and promote the best of the best innovations in the field of heathcare,” said Eric Hillenbrand, a managing director with AlixPartners and leader of the firm’s healthcare team. “Be it in our work with automotive companies, in retail or in healthcare, AlixPartners prides itself at undertaking complex issues that others might shy away from and at working closely and cooperatively with a wide variety of people at once – traits that were demanded by this task as well.”
The top 10 technologies, which are highlighted in detail at www.clevelandclinic.org/heartcenter/pub/news/archive/2007/innovations10_04.ASP, include a novel, catheter-based robot that allows precise, remote manipulations inside the human body, perhaps even rivaling human surgical capabilities; a new artificial aortic heart valve that is implanted using minimally invasive techniques; and an RNA (ribonucleic acid) technology to treat patients who are unable to reach their targeted cholesterol levels with statins (a class of hypolipidemic agents) alone or who are statin-intolerant.
A nominated innovation was required to meet four major criteria: have significant potential for short-term clinical impact; have a high probability of success; be on the market or close to being introduced; and have sufficient data available to support its nomination.
About AlixPartners
AlixPartners is a global restructuring, consulting and financial advisory services firm, with offices in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Dusseldorf, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai and Tokyo. The firm has performed performance-improvement consulting with a number of healthcare and life sciences companies. It is on the Web at www.alixpartners.com. |