CAMLS By The Numbers: USF In Downtown Tampa

USF Health's CAMLS, the new Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation, plans a grand opening ceremony with academic and community dignitaries on Friday, March 30, in downtown Tampa.

Among the highlights they will see during behind-the-scenes tours:

    •    A simulation room that can re-create with lights and sound every imagined scenario for medical treatment from the soothing blue lights and lullabies of a child's nursery to the flashes and crashes of exploding bombs and automatic gunfire common on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

    •    An innovation room paneled with dry erase boards where researchers, scientists and medical professionals can vet and evolve ideas from concept to development of a prototype for testing.

    •    State-of-the art operating rooms and equipment designed for teaching that could be converted almost instantly into a real-life trauma center in the event of a natural or manmade disaster in Florida.

As Tampa gears up for the celebration and plans for the resulting economic impact on all things Tampa Bay from Tampa International Airport to hotels and restaurants to medical supplies and suntan lotions, consider the facts and figures surrounding the new CAMLS center.

Facts And Figures

Cost of construction: $38 million (all private money)

Doctors / medical personnel expected to visit for training in the first year: 30,000

Size: 90,000 square feet

Three simulation centers -- robotics, surgical, pediatric
A hybrid catheterization lab (first of its kind in USA)

Surgical stations for learning: 35 (21 in one room)
Operating microscopes: 11

Seats in auditorium: 200
Seats in each of 3 classroom: 50
Seats in board room: 38
Seats in dining hall: 250

Patient exam rooms: 6
Team training rooms: 5
Individual training rooms: 8

Slices (views) taken by CT scanners: 64

Watch this August 2011 version of "The Mayor's Hour'' on City of Tampa Television (CTTA) to learn more from Dr. Steve Klasko, CEO Deborah Sutherland and Dr. John Armstrong as they share insights with Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and TV host Jack Harris.

Diane Egner is the publisher and managing editor of 83 Degrees Media. Comments? Contact 83 Degrees.
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Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.