Designed to transform a three-part mission to achieve one goal
Patient care, education and research describe the three-part mission of any academic medical center. However, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute combines these to achieve one goal: create a cancer-free world.
All three mission areas have been tightly integrated into the design of the new James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, which is targeted to open in 2014.
A translational-research laboratory is located on each patient-care floor of the new hospital, with wet and dry labs on alternating floors. Wet labs will be equipped for cancer molecular genetics research. Dry labs will provide space where informatics and computational scientists, for example, can analyze genomics and other data.
The labs will educate, also. Each has a glass front. Patients can look in; researchers can look out. Patients for whom research is an abstract activity will see it under way in their own environment, perhaps instilling greater hope. Researchers who are often isolated from patients will see the consequences of human malignancy, underscoring the importance of their work and strengthening their sense of purpose.
“These laboratories will also enhance our tissue-banking capacity, which is fundamental to our precision cancer medicine program,” says David E. Schuller, MD, vice president for medical center expansion and outreach. “Ohio State’s cancer program has more than 30 years of tissue-banking experience, and we want to take advantage of that to develop a robust biorepository mechanism.”
Each floor of the new hospital will have three care-team education centers. Here, teams of faculty, fellows, residents, medical and nursing students will meet to discuss the care of the patients in their respective patient-care neighborhoods. These rooms will be equipped to support educational activities.
These new spaces will also support Ohio State’s new medical-school curriculum, which calls for first-year students to be involved in patient care. “We will also encourage them to be involved in research,” Schuller says. “To have research activities in patient-care areas should facilitate that interaction.”
This architectural integration of the three mission areas should increase research productivity, enhance education and lead to more effective care as the cancer program continues its quest to create a cancer-free world.