TGH to open Innovation Center in Ybor City

Tampa General Hospital will celebrate the grand opening of its new Innovation Center on Wednesday on the eastern edge of Ybor City — a milestone moment for the hospital that comes as it celebrates its annual Innovation Week. 

The new 32,000-square-foot Innovation Center will be the heart of what the hospital has dubbed the Tampa Medical and Research District (TMRD), which encompasses thousands of acres from Ybor City to downtown to South Tampa, with anchors including TGH’s Davis Island campus and the University of South Florida’s USF Health facility downtown. 

In the old Masonite building at 1205 E. Fifth Ave. in Ybor City, TGH’s Innovation Center will house the hospital’s “innovation team,” as well as TMRD district offices, analytics and IT teams and the hospital’s venture capital arm, TGH Ventures. 

The building will also serve as headquarters for data integration and analytics platforms company Palantir, the hospital says in a release. 

The TGH Innovation Center features event spaces, classrooms, production studios and a “hospital room of the future” designed to showcase the latest advances in clinical innovation, the hospital says. 

“The center is intended to serve as a collaborative hub for startups, researchers and industry partners — a milestone that signals TMRD’s evolution from a conceptual initiative into a visible, physician anchor for health care innovation,” the release says. 

The center’s grand opening comes amid TGH’s Innovation Week, a system-wide showcase held in partnership with the USF Health with events throughout the TMRD and at various TGH locations spotlighting the hospital’s latest breakthrough technologies and advancements in patient care and technology. 

Events feature a series of interactive workshops and demonstrations, physician-led panels, keynote addresses and “fireside chats” with global leaders and entrepreneurs such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and CEO of Ark Invest Cathie Wood. 

As part of the celebration, TGH held its TGH Innovation Awards and Pitch Competition on Tuesday, celebrating the organization’s “bold ideas” with a Shark Tank-style pitch competition involving more than 800 leaders from throughout the health system. Events also include a two-day innovation summit, special entertainment events and a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new robotic imaging system made by Chicago-based GE Healthcare that will further strengthen the partnership between TGH and USF Health, the release says. 

“The Tampa Bay region is at the epicenter of the future of health care — where innovation converges with world-class clinical care, exceptional academics, cutting-edge medical research and leading life sciences and biotechnology companies,” says John Couris, president and CEO of the Florida Health Sciences Center at Tampa General Hospital.