Cleveland Clinic names Fingerhut interim replacement for Coburn

The Cleveland Clinic has found an interim replacement for Chris Coburn, who is leaving for Boston.

Gary Fingerhut has been named interim executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the business development arm of the hospital system, according to a news release from the Clinic.

Mr. Fingerhut has played a key role in helping the Clinic commercialize more health-focused software companies. He has served as general manager of information technology commercialization at Cleveland Clinic Innovations for the last two years.

Mr. Coburn will serve as executive director of the organization through May. Afterward, he'll head to Boston to become vice president of the Research Ventures & Licensing unit at Partners HealthCare, a nonprofit academic hospital system with about 60,000 employees.

Mr. Fingerhut specializes in a sector has attracted lots of interest from entrepreneurs, investors and hospitals. In fall 2012, Mr. Coburn told Crain's that several health IT startups are in the works at the Clinic, which has launched a handful of companies in that sector over the past few years.

“Without question (health IT) is the hottest area in medical innovation right now,” Mr. Coburn said at the time.

In the news release, Mr. Fingerhut said the Clinic also sees “tremendous opportunity in the areas of process improvement, device and therapeutic development, as well as advances in value-based care delivery models.”

Mr. Fingerhut also serves on the board of directors of three Clinic spinoff companies: ImageIQ, Enforcer eCoaching and iVHR. Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic Innovations, he was co-founder of a software company and was a senior executive at a software development and technology consulting firm. He has more than 25 years of technical and management leadership experience in the software industry.

"Cleveland Clinic names interim replacement for Chris Coburn" originally appeared in Crain's Cleveland Business.