On Sept. 3, the University of Tennessee and the UT Medical Center announced the grand opening of the Center for Precision Health.

The new health center at Cherokee Park is set to combine the efforts of researchers, entrepreneurs and physicians to achieve better health outcomes for the Knoxville community.

Road to development

The process of creating the center arose due to a need for more research facilities on campus.

“The overall reasoning for developing the center is to help provide more infrastructure for research focused on human health and wellness,” said Hollie Raynor, executive associate dean of research and operations.

Development on the center began in November 2022 with few obstacles. According to Brad Day, associate vice chancellor of research and innovation initiatives, construction for the space took 15 months to complete. It ended up being finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

“The biggest obstacle is being ready to grow into a larger space,” Day said. “We’re creating access to the next generation of resources to help make us healthier.”

Opportunities of the future

“Students occupy about 60-75% of the space,” Day said. “Students are the ones putting innovation into practice.”

Current and future students will have the opportunity to access state of the art equipment not present anywhere else in Tennessee. Students will be able to collect different types of measurements in their research that were previously unable to be measured.

Regenerative health equipment such as the Medical Device Innovation Core, or MeDIC, will be available to those researching anything concerning life sciences.

If students have ideas for labs or entrepreneurial endeavors concerning life science, the center has room to support them through its Spark BioHub. The BioHub will provide students with lab space, business mentorship, financial planning and more.

The clinical core of the facility is not necessarily innovative, but the research being done there is, Raynor said.

As the center grows, more opportunities for students to join the facility’s staff— likely including students in work-study programs — will become available.

While the center’s focus is on health, it doesn’t mean students of other departments have no place there. Over 20 departments on UT’s campus are either housed there full time or on a collaborative basis. It’s the first research facility that co-locates UT and UTMC.

Ultimately, the center will provide students experiences to better prepare them for jobs of the future.

“We want to get a reputation that UT students are best trained . . . for jobs that don’t yet exist,” said Day.

The center also hopes to have an impact on the greater Knoxville and East Tennessee community by partnering with regional healthcare providers to determine peoples’ health needs and conduct research and clinical trials that speak directly to those needs.

While the center is open, it has yet to reach full operational capacity. Raynor said that she anticipates the center will be fully operational in spring of 2026.

Those interested in working with the center in the future should reach out to Raynor or Kristen Massey, senior director for innovation and core facilities.