Early this year, Indiana University, community leaders and health system Indiana University Health broke ground for the new IU Health Regional Academic Health Center on the IU Bloomington campus.

Scheduled for completion in 2020, the over 700,000-square-foot complex will serve Bloomington and the surrounding region and will include a cancer center, surgical services, women’s center, neonatal intensive care, physician offices and a trauma center. A state-of-the-art health care simulation center used to train students and clinicians on new patient care techniques will be shared by IU Health and IU.

The center also will include the new 115,000-square-foot IU Academic Health Sciences Building, which will consolidate several of the academic health sciences schools located on the IU Bloomington campus, to include nursing, medicine, social work, and speech and hearing sciences. It also will include a new program in dentistry.

“The Regional Academic Health Center will bring together – in one complex – IU Health physicians, clinicians and medical staff with Indiana University faculty, staff and students in a way that will enhance and broaden the services the center provides. This will substantially expand the capacity for education and research by IU’s health sciences programs by co-locating them in a dynamic and state-of-the-art clinical environment,” said IU President Michael McRobbie in a news release announcing the groundbreaking.

With the opening of the new Regional Academic Health Center, clinical opportunities for IU School of Nursing students on the Bloomington campus will be enhanced.

“We look forward to greater opportunities for collaborative teaching,” said Dr. Mary Lynn Davis-Ajami, associate dean, IU School of Nursing Bloomington. “Notably, the expanded interactive learning facilities, Nursing Learning Resource Center, and Simulation Center will afford students, hospital professional staff and the broader community greater opportunities for interprofessional learning activities.”