Photo by Seton Healthcare Family

The Dell Medical School campus will include a new teaching hospital called Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, which will replace the current University Medical Center Brackenridge.

The University of Texas hosted a ceremony April 21 to commemorate the launch of construction on the southeastern portion of the Dell Medical School campus.

The medical school campus will include research, educational and administrative facilities, a medical office building and a parking garage. The school is expected to open in 2016 and will have 50 students in its inaugural class. Partners for the project include Central Health, Seton Healthcare Family and UT.

"We invested in transformation and that is what we are going to get," said State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin. "Make no mistake, today isn't just about three new buildings on our skyline. Our community will be different—healthier, happier and stronger thanks to this project we are launching today."

The school is expected to be completed in 2016 and will be located at the intersection of 15th and Red River streets, near UT's School of Nursing and the current University Medical Center Brackenridge. Seton plans to replace Brackenridge with a new 211-bed teaching hospital named the Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas. The teaching hospital is estimated to cost about $295 million. Funding for the medical school includes a $35 million investment per year from residents of Travis County as a result of Proposition 1, $50 million donated by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and other funding from UT.

Clay Johnston, founding dean of the Dell Medical School, said he views the project as a chance to reinvent health care delivery and make Austin a model community for health care. He said because health care is too expensive, it is important to think about how health care delivery should best be designed for patients.

"We have an opportunity to do that because we're starting from scratch here," he said. "The community really defines our most important mission and that is to provide better health care, better health for Austin, including the underserved. That then becomes the underlying foundation for what we need to do as a medical school."

Brenda Coleman-Beattie, chair of Central Health's board of managers, said the school will address local challenges such as medical professional shortages.

UT President Bill Powers said his hopes for the medical school include vast innovation.

"We're doing this so that we can better serve society by finding new ways to deliver health care," Powers said. "We're doing this because the medical school will embody innovation innovations in medical education, indeed innovations in health care and health care delivery."

Powers encouraged the community to email words or phrases that express their hopes for the new medical school to [email protected]. Select words and phrases will be chosen for a display at the Dell Medical School, he said. To view a 3D flyover video of what the future medical campus will look like, visit this link.