Seattle-based leaders in the fight against cancer announced Oct. 27 that they are forming a new clinical cancer program.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington, and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center are creating the new program, called the “Cancer Care Alliance,” to speed the development of new knowledge and treatment of various cancers.
In addition to providing state-of-the-art cancer care, the alliance will organize a regional network to share information that could improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients.
“This will be a powerful alliance, one that may well turn out to be a model for other parts of the country,” says National Cancer Institute Director Richard Klausner, a leading proponent of highly integrated clinical cancer research systems.
A new, 130,000-square-foot outpatient clinic will be the central feature of the alliance. Plans call for constructing the $50 million facility on the Hutchinson Center campus near Lake Union, to be completed in early 2001.
“Overall, this initiative will combine and greatly magnify the already enormous capabilities of three of the Northwest’s most renowned cancer clinical institutions,” says UW Medicine Professor Fred Appelbaum, who is director-designate and a member of the alliance’s interim board. “Basically, we believe we can accomplish significantly more by closer collaboration and program integration—the sum will be greater than the parts.”
“This is one of the most far-reaching developments in the history of the UW medical school since inception of our regionalized program of medical education more than 25 years ago,” says Paul G. Ramsey, UW vice president for medical affairs and dean of the UW medical school.