MedStar Health and Georgetown CONVERGE toward innovative care

Students in medical lab course — Photo: Courtesy of MedStar Health / Georgetown University

MedStar Health and Georgetown University are developing and building the CONVERGE Innovation, Simulation, and Discovery Center—an 18,500-square-foot facility located in the Reiss Science Building on Georgetown’s Hilltop Campus—that aims to catalyze the future of teaching, learning, and caregiving through interdisciplinary collaboration and industry advancements.

person holding medical devices — Photo: Courtesy of MedStar Health / Georgetown University

“The pace of innovation in health care is rapidly accelerating. CONVERGE will enable our community to be on the leading edge of building, testing, and refining solutions with the world-class entrepreneurs, companies, faculty, and learners it will empower and attract,” says William Sheahan, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at MedStar Health and executive director at MedStar Institute for Innovation.

Using cross-sector expertise, CONVERGE aims to reimagine community medicine in a dynamic hub that will host 18,000 learners annually in cutting-edge simulation and specialty spaces using virtual and augmented reality, eye-tracking devices, and massive data displays.

“Through realistic, high-fidelity scenarios, teams across roles learn together, building trust, shared decision-making, and professional confidence,” says LynnMarie Verzino, senior vice president and chief nursing officer at MedStar Health.

The center’s clinical and innovation spaces will enable big data analysis, computational teamwork, and care model redesign. CONVERGE will also house discovery and simulation spaces for prototyping non-living materials—such as 3D-printed trainers—and exploring the frontiers of living materials—including tissue and organ printing.

medical students and nurses working in hospital room — Photo: Courtesy of MedStar Health / Georgetown University

“CONVERGE brings together the combined expertise of MedStar Health and Georgetown University— across medicine, nursing, psychology, education, science, design and engineering, and the humanities— and community partners to redesign how care is taught, delivered, and improved. Rooted in decades of collaboration, it gives physical form to a shared commitment to education, innovation, and service for the future of health.”

—Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., executive vice president for health sciences and executive dean of the School of Medicine

“CONVERGE presents a strategic opportunity to prepare students, clinicians, and transdisciplinary partners to deliver exceptional, evidence-driven care in environments that mirror the complexity, uncertainty, and pace of contemporary health systems,” says Roberta Waite, dean and professor at the Berkley School of Nursing. “These experiences translate directly into safer practices, stronger teamwork, improved readiness, and consistently higher-quality patient care in real clinical environments.”

Working with faculty from across Georgetown University, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, and The Red House, the CONVERGE Center will bring together experts in psychology, material and computer sciences, education, business, and human performance to improve care outcomes.

“Today’s health care challenges are too complex for a single discipline to solve alone,” says Rachel Barr, chair and professor of psychology at Georgetown. “The partnership between MedStar Health and Georgetown University creates a powerful foundation for this convergence—turning knowledge into meaningful, measurable change.”