U-M celebrates 3-year anniversary at former Pfizer campus with addition of 400 researchers

The NCRC will be home to the newly formed Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, an organization that unites about 400 health researchers from U-M and its partners.

The goal of the institute will be to use an interdisciplinary approach to make health care better, safer and more cost-effective. About half of the researchers are from the U-M Medical School, and a quarter are from the U-M School of Public Health.

The remainder of the research team are faculty members in U-M’s departments of Engineering; Pharmacy; Literature, Science and the Arts; Business; Dentistry; Law; Nursing; Public Policy and Social Work; and the Institute for Social Research.

The institute will join 20 private companies that lease space at NCRC - including BoroPharm and Lycera - and 18 U-M spinoff companies in the Venture Accelerator with which U-M is filling the 2 million square foot former Pfizer campus.

After global pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. announced in 2007 that they would be moving out of the site, U-M bought the property in 2009 for $108 million.

Of the IHPI members, 12 percent hold full or joint appointments at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System, the Arbor Research Collaborative for Health and the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation.

“This cross-disciplinary and public-private nature of IHPI fits perfectly with the overall goal of making the North Campus Research Complex a haven for such research,” said David Canter, executive director of NCRC.

Last week, 80 researchers with the new institute moved into an office building at the NCRC that recently underwent a $13.7 million renovation.

There are currently about 1,300 researchers and staff from U-M and 20 private companies at the site.

In the next coming months, about 400 more researchers will join them. By December, about 440,700 square feet in the NCRC is expected to be in use.

“We truly expect IHPI to become the largest university-based collection of health services and healthcare policy researchers in the country, and to pursue research that will enhance the health and well-being of people locally, nationally and globally,” said Dr. Rodney Hayward, chairman of the interim leadership team that has guided IHPI’s formation over the past year.

The IHPI currently does not have a director.