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Revolutionizing Neurology Care: Previewing Cleveland Clinic’s New Neurological Institute
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Cleveland Clinic’s $1.1 billion Neurological Institute, opening in 2027, will revolutionize neurological care with a state-of-the-art, patient-centered design integrating advanced technology and innovative care solutions.
Andre Machado, MD, PhD, the Neurological Institute’s chief
Known as one of the most globally recognized nonprofit multidisciplinary healthcare systems, Cleveland Clinic continues to set a higher standard of clinical care, as the organization plans to roll out its new Neurological Institute, a $1.1 billion state-of-the-art building, in early 2027. Built with a patient-centered design in mind, the 1-million-square-foot facility will add another major element to Cleveland Clinic's neurological care infrastructure, bringing both inpatient and outpatient services together in one ultra-innovative facility.
In late January, the institution announced that the final steel beam was hoisted into place for the new building, which will be the largest on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus.1 A behemoth in size, the new Neurological Institute will comprise 218 inpatient rooms, 120 outpatient exam rooms, 36 neurological ICU beds, and 18 operating rooms initially, with a flexible construct that’s built to withstand and adapt to new technology as it becomes available.
New Neurological Institute Projection
"The building was purposefully designed for neurological patients for wayfinding to be easy and nonconfusing,” Andre Machado, MD, PhD, the Neurological Institute’s chief, told NeurologyLive®. "We have to recognize that some of our patients are not in their best neurological moment."
Machado, who currently serves as the Charles and Christine Carroll Family Endowed Chair in Functional Neurosurgery, added, "It was designed to optimize natural light to every patient room and to every location where a patient is seen, understanding that natural light is healthy and provides an environment of healing."
For years, Cleveland Clinic has been widely recognized for its expertise in neurology and neurological care, particularly in areas like advanced research and clinical trials, comprehensive and multidisciplinary care, among others. The new institute will further expand Cleveland Clinic’s reach, which currently spans across 23 hospitals and 280 outpatient facilities.
Building Capabilities
The new pavilion is designed with a patient-centric approach in mind, taking into account the thoughts and feelings that those with neurologic illness experience. Patients who enter the building will have their own room, bathroom, and private space—a stark contrast from most institutions where patients often share rooms with others.
A lot of the changes to care are noticeable as soon as patients walk in the front door. With the implementation of a new assessment center, it takes only a handful of minutes for patients to be checked in and onto their next appropriate appointment or step. During that brief walk-through, the center will capture data on their neurological function, ultimately reducing the time clinicians need to take to conduct a full neurological exam once they meet face-to-face. As a result, clinicians may be able to spend more time going through finer details of their exam with the patient, including questions about decision-making and potentially medication, depending on the prognosis.
Upesh Dhanji
"Every square foot of this institute has been considered through the lens of how it will serve patients and clinicians. We focused on ensuring that patients wouldn’t feel like just another appointment in a clinical system, but rather like individuals being deeply cared for in a thoughtful, supportive space,” Upesh Dhanji, Director of Design, Buildings at Cleveland Clinic, told NeurologyLive®.
The design architect for the building was Hopkins Architects. Through constant dialogue with clinicians, patients, and Cleveland Clinic leadership, the vision of building an experience of healing and connection came together. "The way the building encourages movement and interaction reflects its mission–to bring people together for healing. This isn’t just a facility; it’s a space designed to foster community among those seeking care and those providing it," Upesh added.
Upesh went on to state that as patients often come into these types of facilities with anxiety, everything within the center is about developing a calming the environment. While many of the differences in this new building are simplistic, they represent the innovation and time it took when designing it. During the design process, the architects mulled over things like where to place vertical circulation and how to minimize waiting times, as well as speeding up the process to see the appropriate clinicians.
Envisioned Entrance to New Neurological Institute
The institute is fully dedicated to neurological care, addressing brain, spine, and nerve disorders, among others. Within it, the building will feature an extensive outpatient section, comprising the bottom half of the building. This section will focus on ambulatory activities, allowing same-day assessments, evaluations, and treatments. It also includes cutting-edge technologies like electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and advanced imaging tools. Here, the innovative—and aforementioned—assessment center will help streamline neurological exams and boost patient-doctor interaction.
Inpatient care, located in the top half of the building, features 5 floors of private, single-occupancy rooms as well. Notably, clinicians in this facility will have the capability to monitor the neurological function of patients not only within the building but also across other Cleveland Clinic-affiliated hospitals and facilities.
"It’s feasible to maintain 24/7 hyper specialty coverage in one location, but not in all locations," said Machado. By leveraging technology to interconnect its network, Cleveland Clinic functions as a fully integrated system.
Spanning 1 million square feet, the new building will offer imaging, infusion, and surgical services, as well as collect objective data on patients’ neurological function and how it impacts their performance. Through the assessment center, data collection will occur each time a patient enters the building, allowing clinicians a snapshot of how they have improved or diminished since their last follow-up.
"We will be able to automatically capture, objectively, is their walking better or worse? If it’s worse, what can we change? If it changed, did it get better? Through this, we can better quantify the results of our interventions more objectively, more routinely, and with less human effort to do so," Machado said.
Blending clinical care, education, and science into one facility, this new institute will be available for a variety of neurological disorders, covering psychiatry, chronic pain, rehabilitation for injuries, neurodegenerative diseases, spine disease, and stroke, among others. Patients will have access to an incredibly concentrated area of knowledge, leveraging numerous different specialists and healthcare professors all affiliated with neurological care under one roof.
Technology and Innovation
For years, Cleveland Clinic has been at the forefront of integrating innovative research ideas into clinical care, as well as advancing research collaborations in efforts to improve care for those with neurologic conditions. Its commitment to advancing the field is evident in its development of cutting-edge diagnostic tools, like advanced neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques, which enable more precise diagnoses and personalized treatment plans.
"This project represents a harmonious intersection of science, architecture, and humanity," added Upesh. "The challenge was to create a structure that would not only house state-of-the-art medical care, but also serve as a beacon for innovation and collaboration."
In the new building, clinicians will have access to ultramodern operating rooms equipped with built-in MRIs and electrophysiology systems and designed to accommodate future surgical technologies. These operating rooms, built to be intuitive and adaptive, are positioned on the middle floor between outpatient and inpatient areas.
"We are leaving space for 2 operating rooms to be filled up with future technology," Upesh said. "We’re providing that capacity of growth for future tech into the building, which I think is a great thing; it’s one of the small things. A building that can adapt for the future of care is what we’re trying to achieve."
The building will also incorporate MEG, a noninvasive test that neurologists and neurosurgeons use to help plan brain surgeries for epilepsy and tumor removal. MEG, a more modern and innovative technology, maps out the sensory areas of your brain and can pinpoint the exact location where seizures originate. This approach is different from functional MRI in that it pinpoints more specific areas of activity, whereas functional MRI shows general areas of activity. In addition, MEG is better at showing time-related characteristics of brain activation than functional MRI.2
Functionality was a major feature the architects wanted to stress when designing the building. On the inside, there are several small but functionally smart changes that may improve patient care, including ensuring the doors of each corridor are sliding, allowing patients to easily operate through the building, including those in a scooter or wheelchair. Almost all of the rooms included were oversized to be ADA compliant, which is not always the case for each institution.
As the architects were designing the institute, they drew from past experiences on previous projects, implementing benchmarks for the groundwork. The teams had several different meetings with patients, clinicians, and other architects discussing what has previously worked and what has not.
"There’s no guideline out there that can tell you how to design something like this," Upesh continued. "Drawing on our clinicians [and] researchers is the best thing we can have. They know how to provide the best care, and our job is to find the practical solution."
There are several emerging technologies set to revolutionize neurosurgical approaches, enhancing precision, patient outcomes, and recovery times. These may include minimally invasive procedures, robotic surgical systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality, and brain-computer interfaces. This forthcoming neurological institute is being designed with these technological advancements in mind. The facility will feature integrated technology, including consent-based wearable sensors to capture patients’ neurological performance data, aligning with the shift toward digitized patient evaluations and precision medicine.
On the future of neurology and research, Machado commented, "the approach here on how we’re going to care for the sick is similar to the approach we are using to study the healthy. We want to learn why people become sick, which today we don’t completely know.” He added, "The aspiration for this building is to use AI, machine learning, and trained models to help us capture diagnoses that we may miss with our naked eye today."
