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2008 Annual Report

Photo: Virtual Patient Laboratory

The UC Davis Medical Center’s Virtual Patient Laboratory is one example of the university’s leadership in using technology to improve medicine.
Photo by Debbie Aldridge

Medical advancement

What was once a county hospital evolved into a nationally recognized medical center after it was taken over by the university in 1966. Since then, the UC Davis Health System has provided medical care to innumerable patients, while its physicians and researchers have developed technologies, therapies and procedures that have advanced medicine.

For example, patients blind from damaged corneas can now see because of UC Davis research breakthroughs and procedures performed at the UC Davis Medical Center. Patients have benefitted from the implanting of artificial corneas and lenses and the development of a new bioengineering procedure that grows replacement corneal tissue in a laboratory dish.

Surgeons in trauma centers and on military frontlines save more lives thanks to techniques pioneered by UC Davis trauma surgeons.

Doctors and patients in rural areas receive immediate consultation from specialists at the medical center through a live, interactive telemedicine program, which is expanding to include more than 300 rural clinics and hospitals.

Better pain relief is at hand through studies by UC Davis experts that revamped pain management education for physicians in California.

UC Davis discoveries continue to improve medicine, such as recent cryobiology research that increases the shelf life of blood platelets by freeze-drying living cells.

Photo illustration of a tractor, pregnant woman, Chuck Gardner and a nurse with a child.

Additional impacts

Air quality

UC Davis is a national leader in understanding one of the resources most important to us as people—the air we breathe. Studies have informed us of the health risks from secondhand cigarette smoke, traffic and agriculture pollution, and even the fine dust that coated Manhattan around Ground Zero following the Sept. 11 attacks. During the 1970s, UC Davis veterinary researchers developed tools used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set national air-quality standards.

Nutrition

UC Davis has played a key role in the understanding of maternal nutrition and breastfeeding. Nutrition researchers helped establish new standards that assist parents, doctors, policymakers and child advocates better evaluate whether the health care needs of children are being met. Current research at the Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics, led by UC Davis, will provide doctors with DNA profiles of patients to help them prescribe medicines and diets tailored specifically to their patients’ genes.

Neurodevelopmental disorders

Researchers with the interdisciplinary UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute are discovering the causes and developing better treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, fragile X syndrome, ADHD and epilepsy. Established in 1998 by a group of passionate parents, like Chuck Gardner (above, third from left), with support from physicians, scientists, administrators and politicians, the internationally collaborative organization advances toward cures and provides hope to families worldwide.

The next 100 years: New nursing school

UC Davis will improve the future health and health care of citizens in California and throughout the nation with the launch of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. The school emphasizes leadership, scientific rigor and a multidisciplinary approach to the training of future nurses, educators and researchers who will make positive, long-term impacts on issues such as obesity, infectious disease and environmental hazards.