Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Summa Health System this morning announced plans to expand three of its hospital emergency departments and build two new full-service, stand-alone emergency rooms in the region.The new free-standing, 24-hour emergency departments will be built in Green, where the health system already has a Summa Health Center outpatient facility; and in Medina County, where the Summa [...]

Summa Akron City Hospital is expanding its emergency department to handle an increasing number of ill and injured patients.The Akron City Planning Commission is reviewing site plans on Friday for a proposed two-story, 84,000-square-foot addition to the north of the existing emergency room.The project will increase the ER size from 43 beds to 75, Summa [...]

University Hospitals Case Medical Center has spun off Fluence Therapeutics Inc., licensing to the company photodynamic therapy technology for the treatment of psoriasis and other skin diseases.

The Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron has made its first round of research and development grants: $680 million to eight projects ranging from a contact lens embedded with a sensor that measures blood glucose levels to a polymer platform for drug-eluting prosthetic devices.

Thomas J. Strauss has been the driving force behind Akron’s Summa Health System for a decade. As president and chief executive, Strauss has led Summa to expand and become a major player in the regional health-care market.

Israeli medical device maker NI Medical Ltd. will open an office in the Akron Global Business Accelerator, likely during the first half of the year, where it could employ up to 30 workers in four years. But wooing the maker of an innovative heart monitoring device was a group effort.

Live Web chats are part of an interactive media tool set that is getting out the message of Akron Children’s Hospital, boosting its profile as a pediatric expert and leading to more specialized surgeries for patients who come from as far away as California.

NASA’s chief of space medicine visited biomedical engineering students at the University of Akron today, as well as doctors and researchers at Summa Health System in Akron, the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rootstown and the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron to find disruptive medical innovations that can help take care of astronauts.

Akron Children’s Hospital provided nearly $60 million in benefits to its communities in 2008 — a 23 percent increase from 2007.

This time last year, Akron General’s operating loss was about $7 million, Rindler said. Today, the medical center’s operating revenue is exceeding expenses by $2.1 million. ”The better you do, the more resources you have, the more you can solicit ideas from physicians,” Interim Chief Executive Michael Rindler said. ”It now is really feeding on itself the cultural changes and the financial improvement.”