This Month's Latest Tech News in Cleveland, OH - Sunday August 31st 2025 Edition

Weekly commentary: Cleveland's AI moment - healthcare, startups, and policy collide - Cleveland's health ecosystem is sprinting from pilots to systemwide deployments as clinical AI moves into both the ICU and the clinic: Cleveland Clinic has rolled Dyania Health's Synapsis™ across the system to accelerate clinical trial recruitment after promising pilots in cardiology, oncology and neurology (Cleveland Clinic press release on Synapsis AI clinical trial recruitment), while a Piramidal model promises to scan a full day's EEG in seconds to give neurologists a real‑time “co‑pilot” in the brain ICU (AHA summary of Cleveland Clinic AI co-pilot for brain ICU).

Startups, large vendors and policy debates are converging - local hospitals are already automating notes and workflows - so building practical workforce skills matters; short, job‑focused options like Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teach promptcraft and tool use that clinical operations and startups will need to scale safely and fairly.

Program	Length	Early-bird Cost	Registration
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks	$3,582	Enroll in Nucamp AI Essentials for Work (15 Weeks)

“There's so much AI can provide to all aspects of the patient journey... There are also things that AI can't do right now or doesn't have a place in.” - Scott R. Steele

Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and Abu Dhabi's G42 have announced a strategic partnership to build an AI‑driven global healthcare delivery platform that leans on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the Oracle AI Data Platform, Cleveland Clinic's clinical expertise, and G42's sovereign AI and health‑data capabilities to deliver real‑time population analytics and clinical intelligence at the point of care; the nonbinding agreement - described in a G42 press release: Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and G42 strategic partnership details and covered by FierceHealthcare article: Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and G42 co-develop health AI platform - aims to position the U.S. and UAE as co‑leaders in precision, proactive care, accelerate trial enrollment by surfacing candidates at the bedside, and use nation‑scale data analytics to shift systems from reactive treatment toward continuous wellbeing.

Partners	Platform highlights	Initial focus	Agreement
Oracle Health; Cleveland Clinic; G42	OCI, Oracle AI Data Platform, clinical apps, real‑time population analytics	United States and United Arab Emirates	Nonbinding strategic partnership

“Oracle's AI Data Platform and suite of clinical applications can help us understand disease and population health in ways that fuel scientific breakthroughs, reduce the cost of care delivery, and improve patient care.”

Cleveland Clinic's ambient AI rollout and first AI Summit have their roots in a meticulous 2024 pilot - five ambient‑listening vendors, roughly 250 physicians across more than 80 specialties, and head‑to‑head evaluations that prioritized documentation quality, workflow fit, and provider satisfaction - before the system selected Ambience and began phased ambulatory deployment in spring 2025; according to the Clinic's writeup, the scribe now helps document roughly 1 million encounters and, for active users, appears in about 76% of scheduled visits, trimming an average 2 minutes per appointment (about 14 minutes per day) and even persuading some clinicians to delay retirement as administrative burden eases.

Training ran in waves with live sessions for groups of 50, physicians must review AI drafts before signing, and patients give verbal consent - small procedural choices that helped accelerate real adoption while keeping clinicians in control.

Metric	Value
Pilot vendors	5
Pilot clinicians	~250 (80+ specialties)
Eligible clinicians (U.S. ambulatory)	6,000
Active users (15 weeks)	4,000+
Encounters documented	1,000,000
Time saved	~2 min/appointment; ~14 min/day

“The promise of AI in healthcare is that it will enable us to care for patients with a higher level of safety and quality, and a better patient and caregiver experience. Our implementation of ambient AI technology delivers on that promise because it helps our providers fully engage with their patients, saves time and alleviates some of their administrative burden.” - Rohit Chandra, PhD

Regional health systems are moving past pilots and into enterprise deployments as AI stretches from the bedside into billing and research: Cleveland Clinic's strategic collaboration to deploy AKASA's generative AI across the mid‑revenue cycle is designed to speed and improve medical coding and clinical documentation integrity, and early deployments have already surfaced measurable gains in coding accuracy and workflow efficiency (Cleveland Clinic strategic collaboration with AKASA press release).

These tools are built for high‑volume, rule‑rich tasks - coders who once sifted through more than 100 documents per case and chose from over 140,000 codes now have AI assistants that can read a clinical note in under two seconds and process 100+ documents in roughly 1.5 minutes - helping teams capture missed diagnoses, tighten documentation, and generate auditable trails that reduce denial risk (see reporting on early results and revenue‑cycle value by Becker's Hospital Review).

The result: practical, point‑of‑care gains that free clinicians for care while giving finance and compliance teams cleaner, faster data to act on.

Metric	Value
Clinical documents reviewed per case	More than 100
Available diagnosis/coding options	~140,000
Manual coding time per encounter	Up to 1 hour
AI processing speed	Reads a doc in <2 seconds; 100+ docs in ~1.5 minutes

“AI can be transformational for healthcare, not only in patient care, but for helping health system operations run more smoothly and efficiently. We are looking forward to sharing this technology with our revenue cycle teams and continuing to innovate in this space.” - Rohit Chandra, PhD

Legal and civil-rights tensions over police use of facial recognition and surveillance AI - the recent acquittal of Antoine Tolbert, Austreeia Everson and Rameer Askew has sharpened scrutiny of how identification and camera evidence are gathered, preserved and presented in court: defense teams say critical surveillance footage went missing or was mishandled, a warrant affidavit allegedly concealed key identification claims, and prosecutors' shifting narratives raised questions about bias and overreach (see the detailed summary from the Pattakos Law post and local reporting).

Those evidentiary gaps - and jurors' skepticism that followed - feed a broader debate about deploying automated identification tools and the safeguards needed to prevent misidentification, evidence manipulation, and retaliatory charging.

Local advocates and defense groups are already preparing civil‑rights suits and seeking accountability, making the Tolbert trial a vivid reminder that technology‑driven surveillance demands clear rules, custody chains, and community oversight if rights are to be protected.

Item	Detail
Defendants	Antoine Tolbert; Austreeia Everson; Rameer Askew
Verdict	Jury acquitted all three on all charges
Key evidence issues	Missing/mismanaged surveillance footage; contested identification; alleged prosecutorial/police misconduct
Next steps	Anticipated civil-rights and defamation suits

“Oh man, this is my first real breath in over 365 days. I've been holding my breath since Aug. 14 of last year.” - Antoine “Fahiem” Tolbert

GE HealthCare's Aurora SPECT/CT and Clarify DL cleared by FDA; University Hospitals first U.S. install - the FDA's 510(k) nod in May 2025 greenlights a dual‑head Aurora platform that pairs a 40 mm detector and 128‑slice CT with Clarify DL's deep‑learning image reconstruction, a combination that clinical evaluations rated “better” in roughly 98% of bone SPECT exams and promises improved diagnostic precision without higher dose or longer scans; University Hospitals in Cleveland is the first U.S. system to adopt the suite, which also bundles “Effortless Workflow” tools to speed technologist tasks and support patients with high BMI, moving nuclear medicine toward faster, more confident reads across cardiology, oncology and neurology (read more in the Medical Device Network and Diagnostic Imaging).

Feature	Detail
Regulatory	FDA 510(k) clearance (May 2025)
Detector	40 mm detector (≈ twice coverage vs. other hybrids)
CT capability	128‑slice
Clarify DL performance	Image resolution rated superior in ~98% of clinical exams
First U.S. install	University Hospitals (Cleveland, OH)

“Aurora and Clarify DL are powerful reflections of GE HealthCare's ongoing investment in next-generation imaging solutions that empower clinicians to practice precision medicine and make more informed decisions.” - Jean‑Luc Procaccini

Read more from Medical Device Network: Medical Device Network coverage of GE HealthCare Aurora SPECT/CT and from Diagnostic Imaging: Diagnostic Imaging report on Aurora SPECT/CT and Clarify DL.

Ohio has become the first state to require every public K–12 district to adopt an AI use policy - the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce must publish a model policy by the end of 2025, and districts then have until July 1, 2026 to adopt that model or a locally tailored alternative, a timeline that places clear guardrails around privacy, academic honesty, equity and tool evaluation for roughly 1.7 million students in the state (read the EdWeek summary and the Statehouse News Bureau report for details).

The mandate stops short of forcing AI lessons into classrooms, instead treating policy as the foundational step for safe adoption while urging districts to build teacher guidance and vetting processes for vendors and data practices.

For districts and ed‑tech vendors, the clock is now visible: planning, stakeholder review, and transparent posting of local policies will determine whether AI becomes a managed classroom aid or a source of confusion.

Item	Detail / Deadline
State model policy	Ohio DEW due by end of 2025 (EdWeek Market Brief: Ohio requiring AI policies for all K–12 schools)
District adoption	All K–12 public districts must adopt/publish policies by July 1, 2026
Instructional requirement	Not required - policy mandates use rules, not AI coursework

“AI is everywhere now and students are very smart, and they will be able to take advantage. It is important that we have the policies in place to make sure that they're ethically used by students, as well as making sure the teachers have the tools that they need to be able to recognize AI.” - State Sen. Andrew Brenner

Cleveland State University deploys AI recruiters and advancement officers (Claire and Ava) - CSU has quietly added two generative‑AI team members to its outreach roster: Ava, a fully autonomous virtual engagement officer built with Boston vendor Givzey to rekindle ties with alumni and donors, and Claire, an AI recruiter trained on interviews with faculty and leaders to produce deeply contextualized answers for prospective students.

Ava is running an 18‑month, $75,000 pilot and has already texted and emailed about 1,000 constituents - handling birthday greetings, event notices and links to the online donation page while replying within roughly 10 minutes - while Claire can turn a 10‑minute conversation into a polished summary that impressed CSU leadership.

The program is designed to extend a small human staff's reach across ~140,000 living constituents and test whether personalized, campus‑limited AI can strengthen relationships without wandering the web; see CSU's announcement and Crain's reporting for details.

Item	Detail
Vendor / partner	Givzey (partnered with CSU)
Pilot length / cost	18 months; $75,000
Constituency	~140,000 living constituents; Ava started with ~1,000 contacts
Capabilities	Personalized texting & email; ~10‑minute response; Claire trained on campus interviews

“I had a 10-minute phone call with Claire (about CSU's new integrated degree program), and then this A.I. system sent me back an email saying, ‘Here's what I heard.' … that description that it generated was better than anything that I've put together in terms of slides and bullet points.” - Nigamanth Sridhar, CSU Provost

TakeUp raises $11M Series A for explainable AI pricing for independent hotels - the round signals growing investor appetite for XAI tools that translate opaque rate algorithms into human‑readable reasoning owners can trust, and it fits squarely within the wave of explainable‑AI startups aiming to make models auditable and actionable for frontline teams (see the roundup of XAI firms that are making algorithms speak human for context).

As hotels juggle dynamic pricing, usage costs and data‑prep investments that can range widely, founders say explaining why a recommended nightly rate rose or fell is as important as the uplift itself; clearer explanations help revenue managers, operators and regulators alike evaluate fairness and capture value without breaking the bank (for a primer on how AI projects drive cost and pricing tradeoffs, see recent reporting on AI pricing in practice and cost drivers).

If TakeUp uses its new capital to pair lightweight, compliant data pipelines with transparent decision traces - rather than hiding behind black‑box gain - independent hotels could gain a practical co‑pilot for yield management that an owner can actually read and defend in a boardroom or audit.

“The first consideration when discussing transparency in AI should be data, the fuel that powers the algorithms.” - TechCrunch

Microsoft slows some AI data‑center projects including $1B Ohio plan - the company has paused early‑stage work on a roughly $1 billion buildout across three Licking County campuses in New Albany, Hebron and Heath, shelving a planned $420M, 245,000‑sq‑ft New Albany center (on ~200 acres) and saying it will keep ownership of the parcels while repurposing two for agriculture for the near term; local leaders warn the move affects years of corridor planning and potential jobs, but Microsoft frames the decision as strategic portfolio dialing‑back amid shifting demand signals and rising costs, not a retreat from AI (the firm says global AI‑enabled data‑center investment plans remain intact).

For background and project specifics see the ENR coverage of the Ohio pause and DatacenterDynamics' summary of the Licking County projects, which also places the move in a broader industry trend of temporary pauses and site re‑evaluations.

For background and project specifics see the ENR coverage of the Ohio pause and DatacenterDynamics' summary of the Licking County projects, which also places the move in a broader industry trend of temporary pauses and site re‑evaluations.

Item	Detail
Planned investment	$1 billion across New Albany, Hebron, Heath
New Albany plan	$420M; ~245,000 sq ft; ~200 acres; construction slated to begin 2025
Current status	Early‑stage projects slowed/paused; two parcels reserved for farming
Company context	Will continue evaluating sites; $80B+ AI data‑center spend stated for fiscal 2025

“What this means is that we are slowing or pausing some early‑stage projects.” - Noelle Walsh, Microsoft Cloud Operations + Innovation

Ohio Third Frontier awards $1.1M to medtech and AI startups across the state - the Ohio Third Frontier Commission has steered $1.1 million of Technology Validation and Start‑up Fund (TVSF) grants to six early‑stage teams from Lewis Center to Solon, backing projects that could move lab breakthroughs toward patients and pilots; highlights include a $200K boost for Cleveland's Auxilium Health to commercialize an antibiotic‑free wound dressing for diabetic foot ulcers and a near‑$193K award to Beachwood's Recall Therapeutics to advance a gene‑therapy candidate aimed at memory restoration, while Visano Theranostics won funding to develop nanobubble imaging that could sharpen prostate biopsies.

These small but targeted awards - summarized in local coverage and the TVSF program page - are designed to validate tech for licensing or IND‑enabling studies, a practical nudge that can turn a handshake in a lab into a runway for clinical trials and follow‑on investment.

Company	Location	Award	Focus / License
MyFox28 Columbus coverage: Ohio awards $1.1M to boost AI and medtech startups	Lewis Center	$200,000	AI system to organize digital records (licensed from U.S. Navy)
Auxilium Health, Inc.	Cleveland	$200,000	Antibiotic‑free wound dressing for diabetic foot ulcers (licensed from Univ. of Akron)
Recall Therapeutics LLC	Beachwood	$192,956	Gene therapy (RTX‑100) targeting memory restoration (licensed from University Hospitals)
RNA Nanotherapeutics LLC	Mason	$200,000	RNA therapy to overcome breast‑cancer treatment resistance
Visano Theranostics Inc.	Fairview Park	$170,000	Nanobubble imaging to improve prostate biopsy accuracy (licensed from Case Western Reserve)
WhichFoodsR	Solon	$200,000	At‑home intestinal inflammation test for IBD (licensed from Case Western Reserve)

“Ohio is committed to investing in the technologies that are shaping the world of tomorrow… transforming bold ideas into life-changing breakthroughs.” - Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Department of Development and chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission

Conclusion: what Cleveland should watch next - governance, workforce, and opportunity - Cleveland's push from pilots to production makes clear that governance frameworks, practical skills, and commercialization pathways must move in lockstep: regulators and health systems will need the kind of cross‑discipline conversations showcased at Cleveland Clinic A.I. Summit for Healthcare Professionals, while clinical deployments like Piramidal's

AI co‑pilot

- a model that can scan a full day's worth of EEG data in seconds to alert ICU teams - underscore why hospitals need clear validation, audit trails, and escalation policies (AHA briefing on Cleveland Clinic brain‑ICU AI co‑pilot).

At the same time, turning innovation into reliable care requires a workforce that can prompt, evaluate, and govern these tools; short, job‑focused upskilling such as Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp helps operational teams adopt AI responsibly.

Watch how governance norms, workforce readiness, and Cleveland Clinic's innovation engine converge - that coordination will decide whether advanced tools translate into broader access and measurable clinical impact.

Metric	Value
Issued patents	2,800+
Active licenses	900
Startups spun out	107