Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center rises at Lake Nona Medical City, southeast of Orlando International Airport, a lot of attention — not all of it admiring — has focused on the facility’s construction. The first VA hospital to be built in the United States in nearly 20 years, the $665-million center has been subject to congressional hearings and has suffered the delays that often accompany large public projects. But as the physical building rises from the ground, another
A CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE
tive resources will benefit ACRM’s meeting in a number of ways, including offering the potential for pre- and post-event meetings and site visits. Medical City has captured
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kind of construction also has been taking place: assembling the state-of the-art equipment and world-class medical tal- ent it will take to create a new standard of veterans’ care in the United States. The hospital, designed as a prototype, will serve as the national site for medical-simulation training, including programs involving surgical robotics, and is being built as part of the 600-acre Medical City campus, where doz- ens of life-sciences institutions will be clustered together to spur collaboration and innovation. The hospital’s scheduled opening next year will coincide
with the 2013 Annual Conference of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) on Nov. 12–16, creating a perfect storm of opportunities for ACRM, according to Lise Puckorius, CMP, the organization’s global event strate- gist. “The VA hospital system is continually challenged with rehabilitation,” which will only intensify, Puckorius said, as thousands of U.S. soldiers return from Afghanistan, many of them requiring rehabilitative care. And the clinicians and researchers who will work at Orlando’s new VA hospital and simulation facility face the same professional challenges as ACRM’s members. The proximity of Medical City’s rehabilita-
‘We want to know what will attract our scientists and researchers beyond the beach — or whatever is the big attraction.’
s the new
worldwide attention in the medical community, Puckorius said, and the opportunity to tour the facility is likely to attract international attendees. Beyond that, Puckorius expects that ACRM will benefit
next year and in future years from the connections made between the association and Medical City’s growing rehabil- itative-medicine community, many of whose members are potential meeting attendees. The 2013 Annual Conference will serve to educate them about ACRM, which is the only professional association to represent all members of the interdisciplinary rehabilitation team. In many ways, both ACRM and Medical City’s rehabilitative-medicine profes- sionals “are in a growth mode,” Puckorius said. “We are look- ing into the future.”
THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY As the world continues to move from industrial economies based on manufacturing to service economies fueled by information and innovation, the meetings industry is an “increasingly significant element” in economic growth and the knowledge economy, members of the Joint Meetings Industry Council (JMIC) asserted in an official statement of principles released last year. Specifically, JMIC said, the meetings industry serves as a vehicle for collaboration between business, professional, and academic communities. In a global ideas economy, experienced planners say, the
transfer of knowledge between a destination’s intellectual and innovation resources and a meeting’s attendees has become not just a nice extra, but an important way for pro- fessional events to offer better value to every participant. “We already know where our meetings will fit, and if a destination has enough rooms,” said Kristin Mirabal, CMP, director of global programs for The Optical Society (OSA). “You may have a wonderful, attractive facility, but I am looking beyond that. We want to know what will