Midtown incubator the Ion marked its first health care partnership with the opening of a new tech hub built by Houston Methodist.
The hub opened in late August, approximately a year after Houston Methodist first announced its intentions to expand into the Ion. The 1,200-square-foot space includes simulations of an inpatient hospital, an outpatient doctor’s clinic and patient home experiences.
The Ion hub’s design is inspired by the Houston Methodist Center for Innovation Technology Hub in the health care system’s Texas Medical Center hospital. That location opened in January 2020, occupying roughly 3,500 square feet in 6565 Fannin St.
In 2020, Houston Methodist told the Houston Business Journal the hub would be used to explore the many ways technology can be employed in clinical settings, both in a hospital and at home. That included virtual reality headsets to showcase imaging of the human anatomy and to provide a fun distraction for patients, microphones to record and transcribe conversations between doctors and patients to create post-visit summaries, new furniture with power sockets, integration with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant and Apple's HealthKit, and more.
Houston Methodist is also building a new Cypress campus, which is billed as a health care campus for the future. Houston Methodist officials previously said lessons from the Center for Innovation Technology and the Ion space would be used in the construction of the campus, which will open in 2025 after breaking ground in June 2022. The new 400-bed Houston Methodist Cypress Hospital will be the health care system's ninth hospital.
Meanwhile, the Ion is nearly fully leased, with 86% spoken for as of April.
Recent newcomers to the Ion include the West Texas-based carbon capture technology company SCS Technologies, which opened a 1,200-square-foot office at the Ion at the end of July. SCS previously told Houston Inno that the company planned to have 20 employees by 2024. Rice’s Office of Innovation also opened a space at the incubator in 2023.
Several food and beverage concepts have also opened in and around the Ion, with Lucille’s Hospitality Group restaurant Late August still slated to open later this year.
Jan Odegard, the Ion's executive director, said the initial buildup of the Ion came from Rice University’s endowment, but future development will be more of a joint venture with developers.
The Ion opened in 2021 in a 266,000-square-foot former Sears building at 4201 Main St. In addition to its coworking spaces and dining options, the Ion includes event space, classrooms, a 300-seat forum, prototyping labs and maker spaces, and more.
Houston Methodist is the third-largest health care system in the Houston area, according to Houston Business Journal research. The system had 3,148 beds in 2022.
