“The University of Akron announced their newest partnership, one with several area hospitals. President Luis Proenza announced Thursday the BioInnovation Institute partnership. The alliance is with Akron Children’s Hospital, Akron General Medical Center, Summa Health Care Systems and Northeast Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.”
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The University of Akron announced their newest partnership, one with several area hospitals.

President Luis Proenza announced Thursday the BioInnovation Institute partnership.

The alliance is with Akron Children’s Hospital, Akron General Medical Center, Summa Health Care Systems and Northeast Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.

The idea was brought up two years ago between Proenza and the head of Summa Health Care Systems, Proenza said.

The initial goal was to create an academic health center that would focus on areas of strength such as materials research and polymer work.

It is the building of these strengths among these five partners to being a focus mainly on biomaterials and medicine. With a focus on orthopedics, Proenza said.

After the intial discussions took place they began talking with CEOs of local businesses and foundations.

He also mentioned that this new institute will provide additional teaching opportunities, pointing specifically to a clinical simulation center and a center for the development of medical devices.

Associated with that are the commercialization on medically relavent technologies, he said.

All of this will require more faculty here at Akron.

The intial investment is designed primarily to attract new talent to the area, Proenza said. That’s $80 million that will be spent over the next five years. He stated that a large portion of that money will be used to recruit and keep the staff at Akron.

While the research component will be housed here on UA’s campus, Proenza reassured that all the programs that are being built will all be offered here, at the university.

However, other components may not be here, but they should not be far as Proenza said there had been talks of them being located in the Biomedical district.

In the initial phases of this new conglomerate students will not be seeing any huge differences.

What you’re going to see is the expansion of our polymer program with the addition of significant new number of positions researchers in the biomaterials and medicine inter-phase, Proenza said.

He went on to say that this would lead to helping the UA community in creating new materials and devices. This could lead to an increase in both economic activity and medical practice in the surrounding neighborhoods.

While he did make comparisons to the Cleveland Clinic along with University Hospital, he made sure to point out that that was not the goal.

We’re not trying to duplicate what others are doing well, but rather than to find an area such as biomaterials and orthopedics where we think we can be nationally and internationally renowned, he said.

This all comes in hopes of a more economic activity and a lively enviroment around Akron with all the new staff.

However, the first task is to find an executive director for the program.

They hope to find a suitable candidate in the next six months.

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