The Cleveland Clinic has officially announced their Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2013 — including breakthrough devices and therapies which Clinic experts expect will have a major impact on improving patient care within the next year.
The top 10 innovations were selected from some 150 nominations of emerging technologies, gathered from more than 110 Clinic experts.
A high probability of commercial success was part of the criteria for making the 2013 innovations list.
Bariatric Surgery for Control of Diabetes topped the list for Cleveland Clinic physicians in the battle against Type 2 diabetes.
“Many diabetes experts now believe that weight-loss surgery should be offered much earlier as a reasonable treatment option for patients with poorly controlled diabetes —and not as a last resort.” says Dr. Philip Schauer, a surgeon and director of the Clinic’s Bariatric and Metabolic Institute.
Other notable innovations making it into the list include a new FDA-approved hand-held optical scan device that employs sophisticated algorithms capable of objectively analyzing skin lesions that have characteristics of melanoma.
The imaging technology lets dermatologists make an assessment of skin lesions in less than a minute — without cutting the skin. In clinical trials which included 1,300 patients the device missed fewer than 2% of the early cancers scanned.
“Our list gives you the flavor of where health care is going,” says Chris Coburn, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations. “It is the Clinic’s corporate arm, responsible for creating companies using the health system’s research in medical technology.”
You can see the entire list of Top 10 Medical Innovations at the Cleveland Clinic website.
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