HERE'S WHY THEY CALL IT MEDICAL CITY
Orlando VA Medical Center
Serving more than 110,000 veterans in Central Florida, the medical center is open for outpatient, inpatient and emergency services and is in the final stages of opening additional inpatient beds and other specialty services. The VA’s newest state-of-the-art healthcare facility encompasses 134 acute inpatient beds, providing complex medical/surgical/mental health specialty care, advanced diagnostic services, a 120-bed Community Living Center, a 60-bed Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program, and a large multispecialty outpatient clinic.
University of Central Florida College of Medicine
UCF’s Health Sciences Campus, which opened in 2010, includes a 170,000-square-foot medical education facility and the 198,000-square-foot Burnett Biomedical Sciences building. The M.D. program enrolls more than 400 students. In addition, the college includes approximately 3,000 undergraduates and graduate students in the biomedical sciences, including biotechnology, medical laboratory sciences and molecular biology. The $175 million UCF Lake Nona Medical Center is being planned next to the medical school in partnership with the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).
The GuideWell Innovation Center
The GuideWell Innovation CoRE (Collaborative Resource Ecosystem) is part of the 92,000-square-foot GuideWell Innovation Center. Its purpose is to connect entrepreneurs, research and development experts and healthcare leaders with ideas, funding and resources. “We’ll be working with early-stage companies, and helping incubate those companies while they’re developing new technologies and solutions for healthcare,” says Pat Geraghty, GuideWell’s chairman and CEO. The complex offers a variety of spaces designed to enhance interaction, including a 250-seat theater in the round, co-working space for start-ups and entrepreneurs, a “start-up garage” featuring the latest 3-D printing technology and industrial engineering expertise from Edison Nation Medical. There’s also a living lab for testing new products and technology as well as an audiovisual production studio, an executive boardroom and a screening room.
Nemours Children’s Hospital
Established as The Nemours Foundation through the legacy and philanthropy of Alfred I. duPont, Nemours has grown into one of the country’s leading pediatric health networks. Since opening in Medical City in October 2012, Nemours has cared for children from 50 states and 68 countries, bringing new pediatric medical services to the region — including the only three fellowship-trained pediatric interventional radiologists in Florida and the region’s only Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic. Throughout Nemours, more than 450 funded research projects and clinical trials are in progress under the direction of more than 100 Nemours physician-scientists, 25 Ph.D. center directors and more than 200 support staff. Nemours recently announced it’s starting its first three-year pediatric residency program, and is approved to take 12 doctors a year when the program begins this summer. A Ronald McDonald House is on site, with accommodations for families who have children being treated at the hospital. There’s also a Publix pharmacy for patients, their families and employees.
University of Florida Research and Academic Center
The state’s flagship university has a 115,000-square-foot facility that houses a clinical research unit of its Institute on Aging — a program that studies, among other things, drug interactions in the elderly. It also houses the Orlando campus of the UF College of Pharmacy. The emphasis is on clinical research related to diabetes and cardiovascular disease as well as obesity. Through the UF Institute of Therapeutic Innovation, also at Lake Nona, researchers are conducting trials to help develop new anti-infectious disease drugs.
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
Previously known as the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the $85 million, 175,000-square-foot facility opened in 2009 as the first Medical City cornerstone. It encompasses the Diabetes and Obesity Research Center, where scientists focus on metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity as well as on Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. The institute’s East Coast campus — the main campus is in La Jolla, California — is also home to the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, where researchers work to identify and develop new medicines. Earlier the institute announced that it was no longer economically feasible to operate a Florida facility. However, at press time it appeared likely that UCF would create a comprehensive cancer research and treatment center at the facility, with a focus on basic and translational research. The university is reportedly bringing in three partners: the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, which is Hospital Corporation of America’s cancer research division; Provision Healthcare, a network of cancer centers and developer of next-generation proton beam therapy; and Alter+Care, an Illinois-based development and investment company to establish and fund the project.