Getting It Right

We live in an age of instant answers. Ask a question, tap a screen and information arrives before you’ve finished the thought. It’s remarkable — and it has quietly reshaped what we expect from almost everything, including medicine.

But not all answers are created equal.

When you type a question into a search engine or a chatbot, you get speed. What you don’t always get is truth — the kind that has been tested, examined and staked to something real. In medicine, that kind of truth takes science. It takes expertise. And at Cleveland Clinic, it takes the dedicated caregivers who make up our Diagnostics Institute.

Most patients never meet them. A blood draw disappears into a pneumatic tube. A scan is taken in a darkened room. And then, later, a doctor delivers news. What happens in between — the laboratories, the microscopes, the algorithms, the pathologists and radiologists working with extraordinary precision — remains largely invisible. As Brian Rubin, MD, PhD, Chair of the Diagnostics Institute, puts it: “Without diagnostics, doctors are flying blind.”

This issue’s cover story pulls back the curtain on that world. You’ll meet a patient named Stacey Claus, whose cancer was found not by any of the routine tests she had undergone, but by a pathologist examining tissue after an unrelated surgery. Every blood test, every ultrasound, every tumor marker had come back normal. Diagnostics told a different tale. “The only way we found out,” Stacey says, “was through the work of the pathologist.”

Her story is a powerful reminder of what’s at stake. The Diagnostics Institute touches nearly every patient who walks through our doors, shaping not just whether a diagnosis is right, but how patients feel, how quickly they recover and how conservatively we can treat them. “It all starts with the right diagnosis,” Dr. Rubin says.

The potential, with the right investment, is extraordinary.

Philanthropy has always fueled Cleveland Clinic’s ability to push beyond what’s standard toward what’s possible. The Diagnostics Institute is one of the most compelling frontiers for that investment: a place where donor support can open pipelines of research and innovation that directly change lives.

In an age of instant information, the science behind the answer is more valuable than ever.

I’m grateful for your partnership in making sure that science keeps advancing.

We’d Like to Hear from You

Cleveland Clinic Magazine welcomes letters from readers. 
Email ClevelandClinicMag@ccf.org or drop us a line at Cleveland Clinic Magazine, Philanthropy, 9500 Euclid Avenue/HS1-15, Cleveland, OH 44195-0002.