EDITORIAL

Jul 29, 2010 — The Orlando Sentinel

Jul. 29, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty was joined by other Central Florida leaders and Gov. Charlie Crist this week to celebrate AirTran (NYSE:AAI) Airways' new operations center in Orlando, and the airline's plan to base 100 pilots in the city. For an economy hungry for new jobs, it was a welcome serving of good news.

But last week, Mr. Crotty was talking up an opportunity that could mean far more to the region: making Central Florida the nation's hub for health-care training using computer modeling and simulation.

The mayor called it "the next big thing" at a remarkable meeting of leaders from government, health care, the military, business and academia. Whether medical simulation reaches that potential in this region may depend on how many of those leaders heed Mr. Crotty's call to make it a priority and work together on it.

There's already a template for success in Central Florida. In recent years, cooperation among a broad cross-section of the region's leaders brought a new medical school to the University of Central Florida and landed the Sanford- Burnham Institute for Medical Research.

Competition is always fierce for high-wage, high-tech jobs. But Central Florida would enter this contest with some distinct advantages.

This region already is one of the nation's leading locations for computer modeling, simulation and training. It's a $3 billion industry in Central Florida, involving more than 150 companies and supporting more than 30,000 jobs.

The industry's development has been driven by its No. 1 customer, the U.S. military, which has joint facilities at the Central Florida Research Park. Military uses include flight and combat simulators.

But applications -- and opportunities -- have been expanding to other fields. One of the most promising is health care, thanks to a confluence of factors.

The U.S. Department of Labor has projected that health care will be adding 3 million jobs over the next decade. Medical training will have to keep pace.

Already, medical-oversight bodies across the nation are incorporating computer simulation into their training requirements. Simulation is seen as a way to improve safety and results in health care.

And the budding medical city at Lake Nona represents a cluster of major health-care players that will be making use of simulation. UCF's medical school, for example, has integrated simulation into its curriculum. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has decided to locate its new national simulation training center at its new Lake Nona hospital.

Central Florida also is the nation's top destination for health-care conferences. Doctors and nurses flock to Orlando for education and training -- a perfect audience to target on medical simulation.

The National Center for Simulation, a trade group headquartered in Orlando, has been organizing an alliance aimed at making Central Florida the nation's medical-simulation center. The alliance -- its acronym is FLASH -- intends to market the region's advantages to attract investments and jobs.

Such an effort, of course, will take money -- a real challenge when governments are cutting basic services and many businesses are struggling. That's why a team effort is so important. The more players willing to join, the more resources that should be available. And that should boost the chances for success.

Central Florida's leaders have made progress in recent years in reducing the region's dependence on tourism and construction, but they have more to do. The potential to lead the nation in medical simulation is too good an opportunity for them to pass up.

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