Cleveland Clinic is evolving its approach to innovation through a new partnership with venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, designed to accelerate the development of market-ready healthcare technologies and improve patient care.
The collaboration, first announced Oct. 14 at the Cleveland Clinic Life Science Summit in London, builds on the organizations’ shared goal of advancing new technologies in AI, digital health tools, and next-generation therapeutics.
Geoffrey Vince, PhD, chief of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, said the collaboration marks a strategic shift from the health system’s traditional “inside-out” model — commercializing ideas developed internally — to a more outward-looking “outside-in” approach.
“We’ve traditionally worked on what I call the inside-out process at Cleveland Clinic Innovations, where we start with ideas that are formed and developed within Cleveland Clinic, and then we try and commercialize them,” he told Becker’s. “Recently, we’ve moved to an outside-in approach where we identify problems that we have within our healthcare system or within healthcare in the U.S. or around the world, and then we go out and we look for partners.”
The new model reflects Cleveland Clinic’s recognition that innovation increasingly requires collaboration beyond institutional walls.
By teaming up with Khosla Ventures, Cleveland Clinic hopes to gain broader visibility into emerging startups that are addressing critical healthcare challenges.
“We only know what we know,” Dr. Vince said. “By partnering with Khosla Ventures… we have access to a much greater number of companies that we can work with. They’ll give us greater visibility of the companies that are out there addressing the problems that we’ve identified.”
Under the partnership, startups in Khosla’s portfolio will have the opportunity to work directly with Cleveland Clinic providers to test and validate innovations in clinical settings. The arrangement also gives the health system earlier access to emerging technologies, while both organizations explore potential joint incubation efforts — including the launch of new companies that combine Khosla’s technical development expertise with Cleveland Clinic’s clinical testing environment.
The collaboration is currently in its early stages, with the two organizations developing operational details and meeting cadences. The focus, Dr. Vince said, will be on areas where Cleveland Clinic’s clinical expertise and Khosla’s portfolio can intersect to bring solutions to market more efficiently.
“Bringing technology to the market can take a considerable amount of time, and I think by working together efficiently, we can definitely improve that,” he said. “AI is everywhere — and that’s part of the problem as well as the solution. How do you differentiate the hype from reality? Digital health is huge… how do we get more patients in to experience Cleveland Clinic level of care? Digital health can help with that.”
The partnership also complements Cleveland Clinic’s broader global ambitions, including its new cancer center in London set to open in 2027.
“We can test it. We have the environment, we have the geography. We are a global company, and we really can work together to accelerate the timelines,” he said.
Looking ahead, Dr. Vince said the ultimate goal is to enhance both efficiency and patient experience — critical priorities as healthcare organizations face tightening margins.
“It’s difficult to raise prices in healthcare just because it’s so tightly controlled,” he said. “Anything we can do to improve efficiency without compromising the patient experience — that’s what we will do. It’s very easy to cut. It’s very difficult to be more efficient and maintain quality. And that’s what we will do.”
