By Ben Sutherly <\/p>\n
The Columbus Dispatch Monday May 7, 2012 5:23 AM <\/p>\n
Dr. Michael Grever, chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Ohio State University, gives a tour of the cancer research laboratories on the eighth floor of the Biomedical Research Tower at OSU. <\/p>\n
Ohios health-care sector increasingly sees medical research as a way to help heal not only patients but the states economy. <\/p>\n
To that end, economic-development officials and researchers say deriving more tangible results from the hundreds of millions of health-research dollars that flow through the states academic centers and hospitals is essential. <\/p>\n
This is a very important economic driver for the state, said Mitch Horowitz, vice president and managing director of Columbus-based Battelles Technology Partnership Practice. The state already has 37,000 nonclinical jobs in health-care manufacturing, research and distribution, but the industry is not as fully specialized as it is in other states, leaving room for more potential high-paying jobs, Horowitz said. <\/p>\n
In 2011, more than $710 million in federal funding from the National Institutes of Health flowed to Ohio. The state ranked 10th in the nation last year in NIH funding, a closely watched metric in academic, business and political circles.In 2008, $678 million in NIH funding came into Ohio. <\/p>\n
Dr. Charles Lockwood, dean of Ohio State Universitys College of Medicine, called those federal dollars fresh money that have a multiplier effect as they circulate in the local economy. He said Ohio States Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Childrens Hospital together pump more than $300 million annually into the central Ohio economy as a result of NIH funding alone. <\/p>\n
The state must do a better job of commercializing the academic research funded by those and other dollars, officials and academic leaders said. <\/p>\n
Little of that (money) is leveraged well, said Tony Dennis, president and CEO of BioOhio, a nonprofit that promotes bioscience industries. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read more from the original source:<\/p>\n
Health research: Cure for economy?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ben Sutherly The Columbus Dispatch Monday May 7, 2012 5:23 AM Dr. Michael Grever, chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Ohio State University, gives a tour of the cancer research laboratories on the eighth floor of the Biomedical Research Tower at OSU. Ohios health-care sector increasingly sees medical research as a way to help heal not only patients but the states economy Continue reading