Starting next year, the University of Michigan will invest nearly $42.9 million in the university health system's medical imaging project.
Imaging is on the cutting edge of medical technology - only without so much cutting. Some medical imaging advanced applications are downright futuristic, says U-M spokeswoman Kara Gavin (CQ) - like brain surgery without surgery, or detailed images of internal organs, muscles and bones.
A major component of the project is a $21.1 million renovation of cardiology space at University Hospital, dividing the unit into three new treatment suites equipped for neuroradiology procedures like biplane imagining and spinal procedures. The demand for such procedures has increased close to 15 percent each year over the past four years, according to a university press release.
The project also includes a $10.2 million upgrade to the health system's nuclear cardiology unit, an $8 million expansion of the system's magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) facility and a $3.6 million expansion and renovation of the system's breast-imaging facilities.
Renovations and installation of the new equipment won't be complete until 2009, Gavin says, but some parts of the project will come online in 2008.
The expansions, Gavin says, will create about 70 new jobs in the university's health system, including nurses, clerical staff, technologists who can run the various imaging scanners and a handful of new faculty jobs for physicians.
Source: Kara Gavin, University of Michigan
Writer: Nancy Kaffer
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.