For a health system operating across continents, replacing an MRI scanner or upgrading a CT suite is rarely an isolated capital decision. Technology choices affect clinical workflows, staff training, maintenance, patient access and the ability to introduce new forms of care across hundreds of locations.
Cleveland Clinic is taking a long view of that challenge.
In July, the health system entered a 10-year strategic alliance with Siemens Healthineers covering diagnostic imaging, therapeutic technology, education, research and workforce development. The agreement extends a relationship between the organizations that has already run for 35 years.
The scale gives the alliance significance beyond an equipment purchasing agreement. Cleveland Clinic has 83,000 caregivers, 23 hospitals and about 300 outpatient facilities worldwide. Its system recorded millions of patient encounters in 2025, creating a clinical environment in which consistency across imaging operations can have consequences for access, productivity and the patient experience.
The partnership covers MRI, computed tomography, radiation oncology, interventional radiology and X-ray technology. Siemens Healthineers also plans to expand an existing group of more than 30 employees dedicated to Cleveland Clinic, adding technicians and training personnel to the on-site operation.
For health care leaders, the structure points toward a broader shift in how large systems can approach technology investment. Rather than manage equipment, service, clinical training and innovation as separate programs, Cleveland Clinic is placing them within a common, decade-long framework.
Standardizing technology means standardizing the operating model
The challenge for a large health system is not simply gaining access to sophisticated imaging technology. It is making that technology perform consistently across facilities, clinical teams and patient populations.
Cleveland Clinic’s alliance attempts to connect several pieces of that problem. Peter Liu, MD, chair of enterprise imaging at Cleveland Clinic, said the arrangement is intended to create more consistent and connected imaging and treatment services while bringing technology, service and clinical support into closer alignment across the global organization.
That distinction matters. Technology standardization can influence the protocols clinicians use, the way equipment is maintained, how quickly new employees become proficient and how rapidly new capabilities move from one location to another.
The agreement also creates a longer planning horizon than a traditional equipment replacement cycle. Instead of evaluating each purchase as a largely independent decision, leaders can coordinate technology deployment with service requirements, workforce needs and future clinical priorities.
There is evidence that other health systems are adopting similarly long time frames. In July, Catholic Health on Long Island announced a separate 10-year partnership with GE HealthCare valued at approximately $500 million. That agreement encompasses imaging, precision diagnostics, AI-enabled technology and related services.
The two agreements are distinct, and Cleveland Clinic has not publicly disclosed a financial value for its Siemens Healthineers alliance. Taken together, though, their structures suggest that some health systems are approaching major technology relationships as enterprise operating decisions instead of collections of individual capital purchases.
That places more weight on the original partnership decision. A decade-long relationship can create continuity in planning and support, but it can also tie future technology strategy closely to the capabilities and direction of a single supplier. Health system executives must therefore evaluate more than specifications and acquisition costs. Service performance, interoperability, education, research capacity and the ability to respond to clinical change become part of the calculation.
The workforce strategy sits beside the technology strategy
Some of the most consequential provisions of the Cleveland Clinic agreement concern people rather than machines.
The organizations plan to support Cleveland Clinic’s development as a Center of Excellence for MRI technologist education. The effort is expected to address ongoing clinical education, protocol optimization, technologist skills and radiation safety. The partners are considering further programs involving biomedical engineering training and clinical education for Cleveland Clinic and the greater Cleveland region.
It is a practical acknowledgment of a constraint facing health systems that invest in advanced technology: clinical capability depends on having enough people who know how to use it well.
Installing equipment may happen on a defined capital schedule. Developing expertise is more continuous. Protocols change, applications expand and new employees need training. A system that treats education as an accessory to procurement risks having advanced equipment without equivalent operational capability.
Cleveland Clinic and Siemens Healthineers are instead making workforce development part of the agreement itself.
The model could have implications beyond imaging. Biomedical engineering, clinical education and technical support increasingly sit at the intersection of care delivery and technology management. Bringing those disciplines into a long-term technology plan can give executives a clearer view of the human resources required to support capital investments.
Cleveland Clinic’s size raises the stakes. Its workforce includes more than 6,600 salaried physicians and researchers as well as 21,900 registered nurses and advanced practice providers across 140 medical specialties and subspecialties. Building repeatable training systems within an organization of that size can help turn technology standardization into clinical standardization rather than leaving implementation to individual departments or locations.
Imaging is becoming a platform for wider clinical change
The agreement is also designed to reach into newer forms of diagnosis and treatment.
Siemens Healthineers will provide expertise to support Cleveland Clinic’s development of a theranostics cancer treatment program. Theranostics combines targeted imaging and therapy, allowing clinicians to identify specific biological targets and use that information to guide treatment.
The organizations also plan to work on integrating intelligent software and automation into imaging workflows, while supporting expanded CT applications in cardiology, radiation therapy and image-guided procedures.
Those initiatives place imaging infrastructure in a wider strategic role. What was once viewed primarily as diagnostic equipment is increasingly connected to treatment planning, intervention, automation, research and personalized care.
The existing Cleveland Clinic and Siemens Healthineers relationship offers a foundation for that work. The companies report that their previous collaboration has contributed to more than 100 research projects and 70 peer-reviewed publications.
For executives, this changes the way an imaging partnership can be judged. Equipment performance remains important, but it is only one part of the value equation. The ability to train people, develop protocols, conduct research, introduce software and move new clinical practices into routine care can matter just as much over a 10-year period.
Cleveland Clinic’s decision reflects the growing complexity of that equation. A health system with operations across the US and internationally cannot modernize hundreds of clinical environments simply by buying newer machines. It needs a system for deciding how those machines, the people operating them and the clinical applications built around them develop together.
The test of the alliance will come over years rather than months. Its significance for other health care leaders may lie in that time frame itself. As technology cycles accelerate and workforce requirements become more specialized, the central capital question is shifting from what a health system should purchase next to what operating capabilities it needs to build for the decade ahead.
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