Retiring founder of Cleveland Clinic Innovations talks tech, Obamacare and deep brain stimulation
by Dan Verel
Earlier this year, Cleveland Clinic Chief of Staff Joseph Hahn announced he would retire after nearly 40 years at the health system.
Since starting his career at the influential health system, Dr. Hahn, a neurosurgeon, has been on the front lines of rapid change and upheaval in the industry, from the early adoption of medical imaging technology to the Affordable Care Act to dramatic shifts in the patient-doctor relationship.
Among other roles, in 2003 Dr. Hahn launchedCleveland Clinic Innovations, establishing a means by which physicians with the system could commercialize their medical discoveries.
Dr. Hahn will retire at the end of 2014. He recently shared some of his parting thoughts – from advancements in technology and medicine to the cost of healthcare and access to it – with MedCity News.
Q: You joined Cleveland Clinic in 1976 — eons ago in terms of healthcare technology and medicine. How would you sum up the most significant changes you’ve seen transpire, at the Cleveland Clinic and across the industry in general? What have been some of the more positive develops?
Dr. Hahn: When I arrived at the Clinic we were testing out CT scanners. The institution I left, the University of Virginia, did not have scanners of any type and were still doing myelograms, which is the injecting of dye into the spinal canal to look for discs as well as tumors and things like that, and injecting air into the brain cavity to see if there were any distortions in the brain. Needless to say, the advent of CT and MRI scans has had an enormous impact on how we evaluate patients. I don’t have to go into much detail for anyone to understand how cell phones and email has impacted everything we do, especially in medicine. You can now transmit electrical waves from the heart to virtually any place in the world. Back in 1976, things like this were unheard of and the possibility of it very difficult to conceive.
Q: What remain, in your mind, the biggest industry challenges based on your years of experience at one of the top hospitals in the country?
