Skip to main content
<p>The Regenstrief Institute Inc., a global leader in biomedical informatics, health services and aging research, will relocate in mid-2015 to a new facility on the Indiana University School of Medicine campus in Indianapolis.</p>

Regenstrief relocation to IU School of Medicine campus will enhance institute’s research, Kenya, Open MRS

405473_actual

INDIANAPOLIS — The Regenstrief Institute Inc., a global leader in biomedical informatics, health services and aging research, will relocate in mid-2015 to a new facility on the Indiana University School of Medicine campus in Indianapolis. With a location, architecture and interior design that will promote increased opportunities for collaboration, the new 80,000-square-foot building will enhance and empower the institute’s highly respected locally, nationally and internationally focused research.

The new Regenstrief Institute headquarters, designed by Schmidt Associates of Indianapolis, will be built on land leased from Indiana University and will bring together more than 50 investigators, 165 staff members and a growing number of affiliated scientists. Regenstrief investigators, who currently are based at multiple sites, are faculty members of the IU School of Medicine, other schools at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, or Purdue University.

The eighth-largest life sciences company in Indianapolis, Regenstrief is a nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to improving the quality, cost-effectiveness and outcomes of health care in Indiana, across the United States and around the world. Founded in 1969 as the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care by immigrant Indiana businessman and philanthropist Sam Regenstrief with an initial faculty and staff of less than a dozen, institute research and clinical tools and its efficient models of health care have been widely implemented throughout Central Indiana and around the world.

Since its founding, the institute has been generously supported by the Regenstrief Foundation, which has committed $5 million to the new building. The IU School of Medicine has contributed another $1 million. The institute is closely affiliated with the IU School of Medicine, Eskenazi Health, IU Health and the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center.

The new facility, to be located at 10th and Wilson streets in Indianapolis, is within easy walking distance of IU School of Medicine research and teaching facilities in addition to Eskenazi Hospital, the Roudebush VA Medical Center, Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health and University Hospital at IU Health. Regenstrief investigators work closely with the patients, clinicians, students, trainees and administration of all these organizations. The majority of Regenstrief’s investigators are also IU School of Medicine faculty physicians who practice and teach in all of these hospitals.

“The IU health sciences schools aspire to be leaders in population health management — improving the quality of health, improving care and controlling costs,” said Jay L. Hess, M.D., Ph.D., MHSA, dean of the IU School of Medicine and vice president for university clinical affairs at IU. “Health informatics, health services and aging research will be among our most powerful tools for effectively accomplishing this. Having the world-renowned Regenstrief Institute on the health sciences campus will greatly facilitate interactions between institute researchers and health care professionals, ultimately speeding advances in health care delivery.” 

Regenstrief investigators developed and operate the Regenstrief Medical Record System, which has served as the electronic medical record system for Wishard and now Eskenazi Health — one of the country’s five largest safety net hospital systems — since 1973. It is the oldest continually operational medical record system in the United States.

In Kenya, institute scientists created one of the first truly scalable electronic medical record systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. That platform has evolved into OpenMRS, a multi-institution, nonprofit collaborative launched by the institute and used in the U.S. and dozens of other countries.

Health services researchers at Regenstrief conduct wide-ranging, interdisciplinary studies to improve health systems, especially for older adults, that identify, study and then disseminate best practices for sustainable impact on quality of care, clinical outcomes, health care costs and the medical experience for patients, patient families, clinicians and the health care system. In 2010, the Wishard-Regenstrief partnership received the President’s Award for Health Reform Readiness and Leadership from the National Association of Public Hospitals (now America’s Essential Hospitals). Continually engaging the community, in 2013 the institute conducted the inaugural People’s Choice for Healthcare Delivery contest.

The IU Center for Aging Research, based in the institute, is an international leader in research in depression, delirium, the healthy aging brain, nursing home quality improvement, palliative care, surrogate decision-making by patient family members, and community participation in studies. IU-CAR includes the IU Edward R. Roybal Center for Translation Research on Chronic Disease Self-Management Among Vulnerable Older Adults. One of only 13 National Institute on Aging-funded Roybal Centers nationwide, the IU Roybal Center seeks to improve self-management among vulnerable older adults by primary care physicians.

Regenstrief holds prestigious biennial research conferences on topics of institute expertise. “Clinical Implementation Science and its Role in Decentralizing Healthcare Services” will take place in October 2014. 

“This is a momentous event for the Regenstrief Institute and the IU School of Medicine,” said Regenstrief Institute President and CEO William M. Tierney, M.D., who also serves as associate dean for clinical effectiveness research for the IU School of Medicine. “Over the past decade, the institute has tripled in size and, as a result, is now spread across three buildings separated by more than a mile. Although the Regenstrief Institute is a standalone nonprofit outside of IU, almost all of our investigators are full-time IU professors, including myself, from various schools and departments.

“The institute serves to draw faculty investigators of many backgrounds into multidisciplinary teams to solve difficult problems for U.S. health care. These collaborations will be much easier if we are all together in one building within easy walking distance of our health care partner institutions.”

The groundbreaking for the new building will take place later this year.