Simulation projects get a $25 million jump; could become $50 million

Peoria will be a focal point in a $50 million project intended to revolutionize clinical simulation, education and health care.

A $25 million gift from Jump Trading will be matched through a fundraising challenge accepted by the OSF Healthcare Foundation to form a partnership of doctors and engineers called the Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation, or Jump ARCHES.

The partnership will create joint research projects between the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center at OSF Healthcare in Peoria and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jump ARCHES will create tools and technologies using imaging, health information technology, novel materials and human factors to enhance medical simulation and education at facilities like the Jump center. It also will create new tools, techniques, and devices for clinical use and treatment.

The goal is to improve the quality of care and outcomes for patients and to reduce health care costs, according to a joint news release issued Friday.

“Jump has been bridging the gap between engineering and health care for more than a year now. Our new partnership with the University of Illinois’ College of Engineering is the opportunity to do so at a dramatically expanded scale,” said Dr. John Vozenilek, Jump’s chief medical officer. “A host of medical challenges need to be addressed at home and globally. Jump ARCHES will be a powerful part of the solution.”

The release said Jump Trading, a financial technology firm, got Jump ARCHES started with a $25 million dollar challenge gift. The OSF Healthcare Foundation will immediately begin raising the challenge amount of $25 million to bring the endowment fund for the partnership to $50 million. The University of Illinois will provide annual support equivalent to that of a $12.5 million endowment.

“Simulating a clinical space is like simulating an airplane in flight — only, some would argue, harder,” said Andreas Cangellaris, dean of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Engineering. “With Jump ARCHES, we’ll be able to make medical simulation more realistic, make the collaborations frictionless, and better extrapolate what the medical field will need next.”

The news release said the idea for Jump ARCHES builds on the success of the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center, a collaboration of OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.

The center replicates patient care areas of a hospital — from the exam room to the operating room — and combines actual medical equipment and devices with simulation approaches and training. This facility provides excellent clinical training to doctors, health care professionals and students alike. 

For more information visit www.jumpsimulation.org.

About the Author

Paul Gordon is the editor of The Peorian after spending 29 years of indentured servitude at the Peoria Journal Star. He’s an award-winning writer, raconteur and song-and-dance man. He also went to a high school whose team name is the Alices (that’s Vincennes Lincoln High School in Indiana; you can look it up).