Physicians and scientists this week will begin moving into a new $40.5 million medical education center at UC Irvine that features a 60-seat “televideo” auditorium where students can watch doctors use teleconferencing to provide care to patients in rural and remote areas of the state. Medical students also will be able to watch real-time medical procedures that doctors perform at UCI Douglas Hospital in Orange.
The auditorium is part of a growing effort by the University of California system to expand in “telemedicine,” a type of care that’s considered especially important to patients who currently have limited access to specialists. UC San Diego and UC Davis are currently building similar centers, and UCLA has been expanding its well-established telemedicine system.
The initiative is largely being funded by the public, following the 2006 passage of Proposition 1D, which, among other things, provided the UC with $200 million to expand medical schools and telemedicine. The UC lobbied hard for the proposition, saying that the state faces a major shortage of doctors in the next decade.
UCI’s new 65,000 square-foot Medical Education Building also is meant to broaden and improve teaching at the UCI School of Medicine, which has about 400 medical students. UCI says the building also includes “a clinical simulation lab and clinical skills center. Students will utilize digitally controlled, full-body simulators in operating-room and trauma-room settings, and the televideo room will allow students to see medicine practiced at distant locations with real-time ability to communicate with clinical instructors.
http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/08/uci-opens-40-million-doctor-training-center/86909/
