Big news at work
Posted on April 15, 2007
I usually don’t blog about work for various reasons, but I think in the past I’ve mentioned I work for the IU School of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology. My job is split between being a secretary for the Cornea and External Ocular Disease Service and being the Local Support Provider (LSP a/k/a computer guy) for the department. It’s interesting and keeps me busy. Anyway, on Friday the department got some very big news.
Philanthropists Eugene and Marilyn Glick donated $30 million to the IU School of Medicine to establish the Glick Eye Institute, a center for eye research and patient care. The Indianapolis Star has the story here, though since they may require registration you can read the official press release here. I wasn’t at the press conference or the meeting where they announced it to faculty, so I’m a little short on the details and have to go by what I heard second hand. Here is the basic rundown on what I have:
- $20 million for a new ophthalmology facility to house research, clinics, and probably administration.
- $10 million to fund ophthalmology research at IU.
- The site for the facility has not been chosen yet, though it is planned to be either on campus or closeby.
- There are architectural drawings for a building, but I don’t know how finalized the plans are.
- The facility is planned to open in three years
IU School of Medicine occupies a large portion of the IUPUI campus. In addition to several office and research buildings there are four hospitals largely affiliated with IUSM all on campus and within walking distance of each other. These are IU Hospital, Riley Children’s Hospital, Wishard Hospital, and Roudebush VA Hospital. VA is owned by the Veteran’s Administration, Wishard is owned by Indianapolis/Marion County, and IU and Riley are owned by Clarian Hospitals. IU faculty work at each of the hospitals and medical students, interns, residents, and fellows all recieve training at those hospitals. Ophthalmology has clinics in each of the hospitals and also has a clinic on the north side of Indy near the suburbs. In addition, the department occupies most of the Rotary Building on campus, where it has offices and a few labs. There are also labs in other buildings – laboratories take a large amount of space and that kind of space is at a premium on campus, very little of it at the Rotary.
As a guess, and pure conjecture on my part, I would guess that all the labs and offices in the Rotary Bldg will move to the new facility. I heard the new building will also house a clinic (or clinics), so from that I think that the clinic at IU hospital will move to the new building as well. IU Hospital has been talking about moving or renovating the eye clinic for some time, to the point that architectural plans have been drawn up. I’m guessing this announcement changes that, though I don’t know to what extent. The pediatric eye clinic used to be at the Rotary and moved into the new Riley Outpatient Center in 2000, so I don’t know what this does for that either. Wishard and VA clinics are slightly different, in that the space for the clinics is provided and I think the respective hospitals pay the department for the faculty to staff them, so I don’t think those clinics will be going anywhere. The department has a lease on the north clinic, so I don’t think that will be going anywhere soon either.
On a personal level, I’m left wondering what all of this means to me. It’s big news that was kept secret to only a few people in the department. As such, most of us had no clues (apart from rumors) until the announcement. I understand the need to keep it a secret, but apart from a new building and money for research, I’m not sure what it means. Since I work for the department, I guess I’m kind of curious what they will actually spend it on. As secretary, I’m not too worried about the Cornea service, though I think/hope the department will hire more CRA’s (Clinical Research Assistants, IIRC) to help with clinical trials. As LSP, I can probably come up with dozens of questions relating to computers and applications.
As an example, in each of the hospital eye clinics, about 90% of the computers are owned by the respective hospitals’, with 2 – 3 computers in each clinic belonging to the department. I take care of the department’s computers, but not the hospital computers. However, if the new facility has clinics, the department will almost certainly have to buy new computers for the whole clinic. If that happens, it might fall to me to figure out what to recommend, how many, what software, etc.
A little food for my own thought.
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I teach part time at IU.
Unrelated: You may have already heard about this but I’m spreading the word just in case: http://www.onedayblogsilence.com/. I really like the idea of a day of silence. A lot of us devote so much time and energy to summoning just the right words to express ourselves. I think it’s especially powerful for our normally-verbose community to acknowledge that even the most erudite vocabulary falls woefully short in a time like this. Sometimes we say the most with silence.