Gary Fingerhut hopes to spread the work of Cleveland Clinic Innovations around the medical world.
CLEVELAND, Ohio--Earlier in his career as an entrepreneur, Gary Fingerhut became intrigued by a medical device that rescuers used to shock heart attack victims back to life.
He suspected ordinary people could be trained to employ defibrillators, if they could find one handy. Turns out he was right.
In building Complient Corp., a Cleveland startup that placed defibrillators in thousands of offices, airports and factories, Fingerhut made a lot of money and helped save a lot of lives. He also received excellent training for the job of a lifetime.
Gary Fingerhut This month, Fingerhut, 53, assumed the leadership of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the commercialization arm of what some consider the most innovative hospital system in the land. He's charged with helping Cleveland Clinic doctors and researchers turn their ideas into products and breakthrough inventions -- both to earn patents and to save lives.
His success in that role, one he's been preparing for for 30 years, could bring new jobs and prosperity to his hometown.
"Innovations," as the center is known on the Clinic campus, is an economic development engine without peer in Northeast Ohio.
Housed in a modern low-rise at East 100th Street and Cedar Avenue, the center includes a business incubator, laboratories, offices and a staff of about 70. Since its inception in 2000, it has executed hundreds of licenses for medical innovations and helped launch more than 60 startups, companies that in turn have attracted about $750 million in investment.
Some of those spin-offs are starting to generate sizeable payrolls. For example, Explorys Corp, a Clinic startup that applies data analytics to health treatments, employs more than 100 people in offices in University Circle.
Explorys is a much-watched company in a growing sector known as healthcare information technology, or HIT, which happens to be Fingerhut's specialty.
Clinic leaders say they expect their new innovation czar to lead the Clinic and its inventors deeper into that lucrative realm.
"Gary has demonstrated considerable dedication and creativity, and his background as a successful entrepreneur made him a strong choice for this important post," Dr. Thomas Graham, the Clinic's chief innovation officer, said in announcing Fingerhut's appointment last month.
With big data poised to transform healthcare, Graham added, "Gary's leadership and expertise in these areas will further contribute to the Cleveland Clinic's worldwide leadership in medical innovation."
A software engineer by trade, Fingerhut was drawn to medical innovations by life-changing experiences.
As he was building Complient into the nation's largest trainer of CPR and AED techniques, he was also helping his first wife, Nancy, battle breast cancer. She died at age 39.
The couple had together climbed another medical mountain. Their daughter, Jennifer, was 2 when she was diagnosed with an extremely rare and usually fatal disease, glycogen-storage disease type IV. The Fingerhuts started a foundation to seek funds for research and education.
Today, Jennifer Fingerhut is a senior at Ohio University majoring in dance. Or, as dad described her, "She's a healthy, happy, brilliant and beautiful 21-year-old daughter."
The experience with healthcare tragedy and miracles shaped Fingerhut's ventures, which often brought innovations and new efficiencies to medicine.
"It certainly added to the motivation of trying to make a difference," he said.
After making automated external defibrillators (AEDs) commonplace, he helped to build another startup, Axentis, into a successful provider of compliance software, products that help pharmaceutical and health science companies follow government rules and regulations.
A multinational company based in the Netherlands bought Axentis in 2009. Soon after, Fingerhut joined Cleveland Clinic Innovations as manager of IT commercialization.
In the last two years, he has helped to spin out iVHR, i-Comet and Talis Clinical, promising young companies offering new ways for handling medical records, delivering anesthesia and detecting concussions.
In April, he was named interim replacement to Chris Coburn, the founding executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, who left in June to take a similar position with Partners Healthcare in Boston.
Fingerhut assumed his new, permanent title three weeks ago but hardly paused for a breath. He continues to run the IT arm of Innovations as well as the larger operation. Upbeat and friendly, the married father of five exudes the restless energy of an entrepreneur.
"What we do here, it's all related to better patient care," he said last week. "That makes you proud to get up and go to work."
Fingerhut lists among his priorities "inventor satisfaction." He wants licensing and patenting to be a pleasant experience for Clinic inventors, so that they keep inventing and so that they spread the word.
Clinic leaders like Graham say the Clinic's innovation arm is a key recruitment tool that helps attract the best doctors and scientists.
Fingerhut said he sees Cleveland growing into a national leader in healthcare IT and he would like to push that progress. He envisions a Digital Center of Excellence that would offer prototyping of apps for computers and mobile devices.
Meanwhile, he hopes to spread the Clinic's entrepreneurial expertise. Recently, the Clinic added a seventh member to its two-year-old Healthcare Innovation Alliance, a confederacy of hospitals and healthcare systems that tap the Clinic to commercialize their technology.
The alliance does more than generate revenue, Fingerhut said. It allows the Clinic a glimpse into advances being made elsewhere. It also helps to spread the Clinic brand of innovation, which is something he'd like to do more of.
"I'd like to see us growing in Europe," he said matter of factly.
As with easy-to-use defibrillators, he sees a product and a business model that can save lives, an idea worth spreading far and wide.