THE Northern Hospital will get a $34.4 million medical research, teaching and training facility to educate the next generation of doctors to care for the expanding northern population.
It will open in 2015 with the latest technology and improve the overall wellbeing of the local community, according to federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek.
The minister turned the fi rst sod for the construction of the Northern Health Teaching, Training and Research Precinct – a partnership between the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, Northern Health and state and federal governments – last week.
The complex will house teaching facilities for medical and specialist health university students, as well as simulation technology, research laboratories and a 200-seat lecture theatre and library for students and hospital staff.
The project would help meet the diverse health needs in the growth area University of Melbourne provost professor Margaret Sheil said.
“This partnership is about training the next generation of doctors and other health professionals they will work with to service the specific needs of the north, which is a major growth corridor for Melbourne,” she said.
Northern Health chief executive Janet Compton said Northern Health was growing along with the northern suburbs.
“The population in Melbourne’s north, which includes the cities of Hume and Whittlesea, continues to rapidly increase, and our local population is expected to grow by 64 per cent, or an additional 128,569 people, by 2031,” Ms Compton said.
She said the Epping hospital was expanding from a community-based health service to a major university teaching service through the project.
La Trobe University vice-chancellor professor John Dewar said medical and other health students, such as nurses, would become part of the northern community.
“Our new students will be able to immerse themselves in the community where they are studying as their placements will be within medical institutions within the northern Melbourne region,” he said.
He said the university’s strategy was “about making a difference to the communities we reside in, in particular to Melbourne’s north”.
Completion of the Northern Health Teaching Training and Research Precinct is expected in late 2014 and it is expected to be fully functioning in early 2015.
