Dive Brief:
- The new $1.52-billion UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is slated to open this weekend following a decade of preparation.
- The university aims to foster relationships between its hospital physicians and biomedical research scientists at the site, to help turn research findings into treatments more quickly.
- Numerous other new healthcare facilities are set to open in San Francisco and the nearby East Bay within a few years, in order to meet the state-mandated safety requirements that were implemented as a result of the deadly 1994 Northridge earthquake in Southern California.
Dive Insight:
The high-tech new facilities underway in the San Francisco area will position the region as a leader in modern healthcare infrastructure, improving not only safety but capability.
"We are bringing together so much more knowledge around precision medicine, around new approaches to providing care," Mark Laret, UCSF Medical Center's chief executive officer, told SF Gate. "For us, this becomes the place where people will participate in those clinical trials and research and benefit from that creativity. It's a big investment in the future of medicine."
The technological new perks are said to include a fleet of robotic couriers to deliver supplies throughout the hospital, and multimedia gadgets for patients to communicate with their families and care providers.
Other new area facilities will include San Francisco General Hospital's new acute-care hospital, set to open later this year and Sutter Health's new California Pacific Medical Center in 2019.
"As far as having cutting-edge health care, no other region will have what we have with all this new building going on," Sue Currin, San Francisco General's chief executive officer, told SF Gate.
However, experts say the impact will extend beyond the region as newly-developed ideas and products move outward, and people come in seeking what the area has to offer.