re = /(?:^|, )\d+(?=\s*[A-Z])/m
str = '1John Radcliffe Hospital/Oxford/United Kingdom, 11Ruhr-Universität
3/Bochum/Bochum/Germany, 3University of British Columbia/Vancouver/Canada, 4National
Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry/Tokyo/Japan,
5University of Catania/Catania/Italy, 6F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd/Basel/Switzerland, 7
University of Colorado School of Medicine/Aurora/United States of America'
subst = '\\g<0>='
result = str.gsub(re, subst)
# Print the result of the substitution
puts result
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html