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HIT Expands with MSU College of Human Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine

MSU Health Information Technology (HIT) has embarked on an exciting venture to support three new off-campus - medical college expansion sites. The three sites are the College of Human Medicine’s Secchia Center and the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s programs at the Detroit Medical Center downtown and Macomb University Center in Clinton Township.

In less than a year, the College of Human Medicine will be moving to the $90 million Secchia Center medical education building that is currently under construction in downtown Grand Rapids. The Secchia Center will be a seven-story, 180,000-square-foot facility, atop a five-story garage that will include classrooms, clinical teaching laboratories, offices and student study areas. When the building opens for students in the summer of 2010, 100 first-year students will be enrolled. Once the building is in finished, it will support a total of 350 students.

One hundred of the 315 entering students from the College of Osteopathic Medicine began classes this summer in southeast Michigan, 50 each at the Detroit Medical Center and Macomb University Center. The students will receive their first and second year of education at these sites, and then will take two years of clinical education at one of the college’s 29 Statewide Campus System hospitals. At the DMC, students are working in a renovated hospital. At Macomb, the college is using leased space until a new dedicated building is completed in early 2010.

HIT has played an integral role in the expansion process by providing cutting edge technology and support for the medical colleges at these new sites. We have extended our expertise and partnered with the Secchia design team of URS, Ellenzweig and Browse Associates to assist in the design of Secchia Center educational technology systems and associated infrastructure, and to effectively manage those systems. We are playing a key educational technology role at Detroit Medical Center and Macomb University Center, linking MSUCOM’s three sites for synchronous and asynchronous learning, so all students have a common experience. Faculty, staff and students among the three sites are also using the technology for meetings

Health Information Technology is providing reliable, state-of-the-art instructional design and multimedia distance-learning technology for the new facilities. Lectures are broadcast in high definition video from East Lansing to the expansion sites and back. Students are also able to communicate and ask questions from either site. Video conferencing utilizes an innovative Crestron interface which allows the instructor to coordinate media via touch-screen interface.

This technology takes instructional design to a new level and allows much greater flexibility in the design of curriculum and the geographical placement of classrooms. By being one of the first to implement these new distance-learning technologies in such a comprehensive way, the Colleges of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine have placed a national spotlight on MSU.

Health Information Technology is proud to be working with MSU’s medical colleges to improve the way medicine is taught.


To see the construction progress of the Secchia Center from a webcam click on the following link:

Secchia Construction Cam


Artist's renderings of finished building: