MetroHealth Plays Integral Role in Launching New Program to Monitor Disease

Cleveland - As part of the Cleveland Innovation District announced by Gov. Mike DeWine and JobsOhio today, The MetroHealth System is launching the Community Responsive Care Institute, a multi-faceted effort to monitor diseases at the grassroots level, to develop new health delivery models to prevent or treat them and to train the workforce our region will need as it grows its health care and technology sectors.

“At MetroHealth, we’re committed to improving the health of Cuyahoga County and of all the communities we serve,” said MetroHealth CEO and President Akram Boutros, MD, FACHE. “We will use our expertise in population health, medical informatics, modeling and maybe most important, our knowledge of community health dynamics and drivers, to enrich the work of all our partners. And we will work with them to develop new, more effective models for delivery of health care and for keeping people healthy.”

The Cleveland Innovation District is a collaborative effort of five major institutions -- MetroHealth, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland State University and University Hospitals -- that aims to make this region a global leader in innovation and talent for health care and information technology. The state is supporting this enterprise through investments from JobsOhio and the Ohio Development Services Agency.

MetroHealth expects to seed the Institute with $30 million over the next five years. The public hospital aims to increase its own research capacity substantially while also working closely with its partners to support and enhance their work.

“As we saw during 2020, complex problems require collaboration and ingenuity,” said Dr. Boutros. “This partnership is testament to how much more we can do when we work together and build off one another’s strengths. We need to move quickly from research to crafting solutions that will improve the lives of the people we serve. That’s MetroHealth’s special talent, and we are eager to work with our colleagues to make us all more effective.”

Throughout the pandemic, MetroHealth has used its foundation of outcomes research, community networks and trusted care to bring an agile approach to testing and now vaccination.

“We know that the delivery of care will never be the same because of the pandemic, and MetroHealth is rapidly embracing these new models that bring care that will become the care of tomorrow,” said Dr. Boutros.

MetroHealth will work especially closely with CSU on talent development initiatives designed to fill the demand for a workforce steeped in these emerging new models of care. Said Dr. Boutros, “All of these efforts will create jobs, advance knowledge and make Cleveland a more prosperous, equitable and healthier community.”