Cleveland Clinic Quietly Expands Online Marketplace
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
ADEO is an e-commerce spinoff of Cleveland Clinic Innovations selling products directly to hospitals, private practice physicians, and patients.
According to Crain’s Cleveland Business, Cleveland Clinic began offering digital healthcare products for sale through its ADEO online marketplace in October 2014. Now Cleveland Clinic is offering a selection of 13 different products from the Cleveland Clinic and other partners.
The e-commerce company, an outgrowth of the Global Healthcare Innovations Alliance, sells offerings directly to hospitals, private practice physicians, and patients. The Alliance includes the Cleveland Clinic, Marshfield Clinic, MedStar Health, North Shore – LIJ, ProMedica, The Innovation Institute, and the University of Notre Dame.
Clinical Innovation writes the offerings include online marketplace selling apps, hosted to deliver ready-to-purchase healthcare products, and services directly. Current offerings include data management software intended to track family-based medical studies and a smartphone app developed by ProMedica that monitors ambient noise levels to help users protect their hearing.
“These aren’t just any solutions. These digital assets are conceived and developed by Cleveland Clinic caregivers and our alliance partners,” said Gary Fingerhut, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations in a news release. “The solutions on ADEO are proven to work within complex workflows and are designed to be integrated, streamlining practices to provide better care.
“As healthcare transforms, we find that many organizations are going it alone. Now we have a place other organizations can visit to see how a group of top-notch institutions are solving practical problems in healthcare delivery. Our hope is that this will spur others to share and commercialize their own great solutions.”
This move by the Cleveland Clinic marks yet another trend in healthcare today, with providers searching for ways to monetize their own innovations, according to Healthcare Dive. While some healthcare organizations like UPMC market their products directly, the Cleveland Clinic has chosen to take a retail approach, not only selling their own products but providing a platform for the sale of their partners' products as well.
Epic is also taking this route. The EHR giant will soon launch its own app store – a company-branded iTunes or Google Play Store for healthcare apps – aimed at creating an independent marketplace for apps related solely to healthcare.