The University of Texas at Austin unveiled Tuesday a unified academic health system, called UT Dell Medicine, that brings its clinics, Dell Medical School and the upcoming UT Dell Medical Center under one banner.
UT Dell Medicine marks the evolution of Dell Medical School and its clinical practice into a full academic health system, bringing its existing care operations and future growth under a unified identity, according to Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D., executive vice president for Medical Affairs, UT Austin and the executive leader of UT Dell Medicine.
The University of Texas at Austin is the academic and operational anchor of the UT Dell Medicine health system.
UT Dell Medicine will operate as Austin’s fourth major health system, and its only academic health system, Lucchinetti said, bringing the 10-year-old medical school, its clinical practice and future healthcare facilities under one name. Three health systems currently operate hospitals in the Austin area: HCA Healthcare (operating locally through the St. David’s HealthCare partnership), Baylor Scott & White Health and Ascension Seton.
Beyond serving patients in central Texas, UT Dell Medicine aims to become a destination academic health system that combines state-of-the-art clinical care, cutting-edge research and next-generation medical education, Lucchinetti told Fierce Healthcare.
"We're bringing together the University of Texas at Austin and all its great capabilities across everything from AI, engineering, humanities, the sciences and discovery. It's also bringing together the University of Texas MD Anderson, which will be bringing forward world-class capabilities in cancer care, and then it brings in Dell Medical School and now UT Dell Medical Center, which will complement those cancer capabilities with additional capabilities across predominantly cardiovascular, brain and neurosciences transplants, and complex advanced critical care capabilities," she said in an interview.
UT Dell Medicine plans to expand significantly over the next four to six years. Once fully operational, UT Dell Medicine plans to double its clinical capability through physicians and advanced providers and more than triple its patient volumes.
Anchored by Dell Medical School, UT Dell Medicine brings together patient care, research and education, system executives said. Its existing clinical practice and ambulatory surgery center, previously known as UT Health Austin, will adopt the new name.
The announcement on Tuesday comes as site clearing begins this month to build a new AI-native medical center in North Austin, slated to open in 2030 and with an estimated price tag of about $5 billion. UT Dell Medical Center, developed by the University of Texas in partnership with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is anchored by a landmark $750 million gift from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The Dells were also integral in launching the university's medical school with a $50 million donation in 2013.
The planned 27-acre anchor facility, which will be located within the larger 300-plus-acre UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research, will feature a 300-to-500-bed specialty hospital, an outpatient clinic and a full emergency department.
UT Dell Medical Center will center its clinical strategy on five areas: cardiovascular, cancer, neurological and transplant care, plus advanced intensive care. The medical center will integrate cancer services from UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, expanding access to advanced treatments and clinical trials.
"There still remains a significant outmigration for complex care out of Austin, not because we don't already have excellent doctors and also places for care delivery, but complex care requires a level of integration and multi-specialty coordination that, frankly, is difficult to navigate in many health systems," Lucchinetti said. "Here in Austin, it is a highly fragmented system. There are multiple systems and multiple different electronic health records. There are multiple different groups across anesthesia and radiology."
Mike Ryan, chief healthcare technology, digital and data strategist at The University of Texas at Austin, added, "We studied this market deeply. We know where the gaps in care are. The reason there's so much outmigration in these specialties is that once a patient's needs get to a certain level of complexity, we see a lot of those people leaving the market, if they are able to, and not everybody is able. It's really only in an academic medical center that you can bring this level of integration and complex care together to meet the needs of those patients."
UT Dell Medicine plans to organize care around a patient-centered, integrated and multidisciplinary care model, Lucchinetti noted. The academic health system aims to make complex care easier to navigate by organizing specialists and services around the patient. The medical center will also share a single digital infrastructure, medical record and billing system with MD Anderson to better coordinate care for cancer patients.
"Many patients are forced to navigate these very complex systems during the most vulnerable, difficult times in their lives, and to be able to have the system orbit them is a fundamental priority, and at the core of the vision of bringing integrated medical care to the patient," she said.
"That is fundamental to improving outcomes, keeping patients in Texas, and also bringing new capabilities that frankly don't exist that patients have to leave to get elsewhere," she added. "We have a priority to address the needs of our community, but also to do it in a way that thinks about what's different in this era. How do you build that system from the ground up?"
The new medical center project integrates artificial intelligence and advanced tech directly into patient care and clinical training. UT leaders believe they have a unique opportunity to redesign the academic health system for the next 50 years and to build AI and other advanced technologies into the hospital's infrastructure from the ground up. Executives are future-proofing the hospital, making decisions today on clinical offerings, spatial adaptability, robotics and AI readiness years before launch.
The architectural firm leading the design is Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The project is past 50% completion of the schematic design phase as the architectural team locks in flexible spatial design and capital equipment strategy for a 2030 opening, executives said.
"We've stepped back and studied, 'How can we do this in a way that takes advantage of technological advances and do it in a way that makes the experience better for patients, that is more connected to patients, but also doesn't lose the human connection that's so important?'" Ryan said.
A hospital built five to seven years ago might have cameras in patient rooms. UT Dell Medical Center, by contrast, is expected to have 20,000 to 30,000 sensors throughout the facility, Ryan said.
"Those sensors will be capturing data that we will use to improve experience, to make care teams more efficient, to be able to alert care teams to patient needs that we might not be able to get to otherwise," he said.
The health system is designing its facilities to support extensive use of robotics, including automated transportation of medications, supplies, linens and food.
Health system leaders declined to name specific vendors or tech companies they plan to work with to integrate technology into the medical center.
The construction of an AI-native hospital built for robotics and other technologies raises interesting challenges about how to build a "future-proof" facility as tech advances so rapidly.
"We're being cognizant of the design, knowing that some of these technologies will change over time, and we're being cognizant of the infrastructure that we build directly into the facilities, so that we can adapt it," Ryan said. "We'll be collecting data, but the algorithms that we run against that data will change over time. We're designing it for future biomedical equipment advances. We're talking with those vendors to understand their roadmaps and where they're going."
For a tech-forward hospital, physical design considerations include elevators and hallways wide enough to accommodate robotics and separate corridors versus shared corridors, Ryan noted.
"There are a number of things in there around how the building controls would work to get to this idea. The building is part of the care team, which is both a clinical concept and an experiential concept. For example, automated dimming of lights and temperature controls based on patient needs or activities, and then clinically capturing data to do some of the interventions, the alerting. We have to think about how do we actually orchestrate care that we're building into this," he said.
The system is designing the facility and its infrastructure to accommodate future technologies, including AI tools "that haven't even been invented yet," Ryan said. "We think we're setting the infrastructure up right to be able to do that," he said.
But a more technological future is not necessarily a more humane one, Lucchinetti countered. "Technology is there in service of the patient, and if it's really doing its best job, it's invisible to the patient; it recedes into the background, and what comes forward is the care model, the compassion, the empathy, the connection that still is fundamental to medicine," she said.
The vision is for the hospital to "become an intelligent member of the care team," she added.
There are opportunities to use AI and data to focus upstream on broader population health and preventive care, health system leaders said. UT Dell Medicine plans to use AI, predictive tools and data to shift care toward earlier detection and prevention, with the goal of helping people stay healthier longer.
"How can we use technology to anticipate, to predict, to intervene, to act, to deliver better outcomes? How do you wire prevention truly in everything we're doing—whether that's at home, whether that's virtually, whether that's through the outpatient capabilities we're building, whether that's through the complex hospital environment," Lucchinetti said.
UT Dell Medicine is exploring how to bring UT Austin’s supercomputing capabilities into clinical care, allowing clinicians to analyze multiple streams of patient data in real time and make faster decisions. The Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the leading academic supercomputing centers in the world. The medical center wants to integrate supercomputing and edge computing as well as automation and digital twin technology to predict patient risks and expedite physician decision-making.
The system is laying the data and computing foundation for AI at scale, prioritizing safety, security, privacy and validation while connecting UT Dell Medicine with UT Austin’s broader technology capabilities, Lucchinetti noted.
UT Dell Medicine and tech leaders are also thinking about the patient experience. The aim is to make advanced technology largely invisible to patients, replacing intrusive equipment and routine disruptions with integrated digital tools and sensors. "There's a significant amount of thought going into how can we make this an environment that really promotes healing," Ryan said.