A $163 million high-tech facility for health-sciences students at the University of Arizona could add to whatβs turning into a local medical construction boom.
The Arizona Board of Regents is scheduled today to consider a 220,000-square-foot βSimulation, Inter-Professional Healthcare Education and Research (SIPHER) Buildingβ to go up on whatβs now a parking lot near the UA colleges of medicine, pharmacy, nursing, and public health, as well as the Medical Research Building and the BIO5 Institute.
βWith the current national and state focus on health care, this project is a priority for the university as it addresses its mission to educate our future healthcare providers in an innovative manner,β an executive summary of the project says.
βChanging pedagogies require learning studios, small group spaces, classrooms that can flip from a standard lecture hall to a room that fosters creative interaction and collaborative engagement.β
The new building will promote team-based, face-to-face communication, βwhile recognizing that this engagement also must occur virtually through multiple technological modalities,β the project description says.
Learners will be connected with technology-enabled patient care such as telehealth and home health, and the facility will foster the UA facultyβs ability to remotely monitor students in real-world, community-based and rural clinical environments, UA officials say.
The SIPHER building would also be in close proximity to the planned $107.5 million BioScience Research Laboratories building, scheduled for construction beginning next month and going through November 2017.
The UA project description of that building says it will be for βcollaborative, translational research that will advance understanding of the molecular basis of human health, aging and disease.β
The SIPHER building location east of Cherry Avenue between East Drachman and East Mabel streets is appropriate, UA officials say, since the building would not belong to any one particular health-science school. Rather, it would be a place for nursing, medicine, pharmacy, other health-science faculty, students, businesses and the community at large to collaborate, they say.
The exact height of the SIPHER building has not yet been decided, but a height of 10 or 11 stories has been discussed, UA Health Sciences spokesman George Humphrey said. The SIPHER height would be similar to that of a new tower expected to be constructed at nearby Banner-University Medical Center Tucson.
The timeline on the project, according to materials accompanying the Board of Regents agenda, is for construction to begin in 2017.
The goal would be to have the building ready for students in the fall semester of 2018.
βThis new facility will help attract the best and the brightest health sciences students from Arizona and beyond, increase enrollment in the health sciences, bring new talented faculty to the UA and support retention of our most innovative faculty,β the project description says.
Banner Health owns the land the hospital is on, and the UA owns the UA Health Sciences land, but to a visitor they are all essentially one big campus, with the hospital attached by a hallway to the UA College of Medicine.
Banner is about to embark on its own construction project β a $500 million expansion and reconstruction of Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, 1501 N. Campbell Ave. That project is slated for completion in late 2018.
Banner officials say they are also planning a new $80 million outpatient clinic on Tucsonβs north side, next to the UA Cancer Centerβs North Campus at 3838 N. Campbell Ave., near East Allen Road.
