Category: News

Earlier today at the second annual Lake Nona Impact Forum, Tavistock Group and Florida Blue announced the development of the Florida Blue Innovation Center at Lake Nona Medical City featuring the Florida Blue Collaborative Imagination Center. The 92,000-square-foot, three-story building will feature both wet lab and office space. Tavistock anticipates groundbreaking for the Florida Blue Innovation Center in the first half of 2014, with a grand opening scheduled in 2015.

Pat Geraghty, Chairman and CEO of Florida Blue, said, “Florida Blue’s mission is to help people and communities achieve better health. We see our Collaborative Imagination Center within the Florida Blue Innovation Center as the embodiment of the future of health care, and we look forward to utilizing the facility in ways to bring true innovative thought to life that will positively impact health.” He added, “We can accomplish this by investing boldly in innovation and partnering with like-minded people and organizations who share our vision for imagining the future. Lake Nona is a place we believe can do just that, and we are committed to helping to lead that charge here.”

Located in the heart of Lake Nona Medical City across from the University of Florida Research & Academic Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Florida Blue Innovation Center will establish a center of gravity for health and life sciences innovation, according to Dr. Thaddeus Seymour, Jr., President of the Lake Nona Institute and host of the 2013 Lake Nona Impact Forum.

“The Innovation Center marks an important stage in the development of the health and life sciences cluster at Lake Nona,” said Seymour. “Anchored by Florida Blue, the building will provide Central Florida’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with a new launch pad that will take advantage of the exceptional research, health care and technology capabilities available at Lake Nona. The addition of much needed laboratory and incubation space will accelerate the formation and growth of the life sciences commercial sector of our economy, creating high quality new jobs and significant value creation for decades to come.”

Florida Blue will serve as the building’s anchor tenant with its Collaborative Imagination Center. Other tenants will include a 15,000 square-foot life sciences incubator to be managed by the University of Central Florida in partnership with the University of Florida. Funding for the initial planning and startup of the incubator has been provided by $2.5 million in state funding made possible through the efforts of Mayor Buddy Dyer and the City of Orlando. Tavistock is actively recruiting companies and organizations to occupy the remaining space of the Innovation Center, which is served by the same advanced technology infrastructure that has earned Lake Nona the “Iconic City” designation by Cisco. Once the first building is fully occupied, Tavistock will begin recruiting for the second of four planned adjacent innovation-focused buildings in the heart of Lake Nona Medical City.

CEOs Support Increased Physical Activity—Effort Will Drive Greater Employee Health and Wellness

Yesterday, at the Lake Nona Impact Forum, an annual convergence of top thought leaders representing academia, industry, healthcare delivery, and government, leaders from many of the nation’s foremost organizations signed the CEO Pledge at a session led by Alex Gorsky, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson & Johnson. The CEO Pledge – a nationwide campaign promoted by the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA) – aims to encourage every CEO in the United States to recognize and champion physical activity as an important driver of employee performance, health, and engagement.

“Our employees are our greatest asset, and we believe that by investing in their health, we are investing in the success of our business,” said Alex Gorsky, Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson. “I am honored to convene this group of senior leaders to sign the CEO Pledge and make a strong statement about the importance of physical activity. Getting people moving is a critical priority for our country and we, as leaders, must set the example by providing opportunities for employees and their families to become more active and improve their health and quality of life.”

More than 150 CEOs have signed the CEO Pledge since its launch last year. Joining Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson, today’s signing ceremony added Mark Verstegen, Founder and President of Athlete’s Performance; Mel Zuckerman, Founder of Canyon Ranch; Pat Geraghty, Chairman and CEO of Florida Blue; Des Cummings, Jr., President of Florida Hospital Foundations; John Brooks, President and CEO of Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard University; Jim Zboril, President of Lake Nona; Thad Seymour, PhD, President of Lake Nona Institute; Roger Oxendale, CEO of Nemours Children’s Hospital Orlando; David Bailey, MD, President and CEO of The Nemours Foundation; Tim Liezert, Medical Center Director of Orlando VA Medical Center; Jeff Arnold, Founder and CEO of Sharecare; Rasesh Thakkar, Senior Managing Director of Tavistock Group; and Deborah German, MD, Dean of the University of Central Florida, College of Medicine. A complete listing of signatories may be found at http://www.ncppa.org/ceo-pledge .

For more information on NCPPA’s CEO Pledge, including how to join the movement for physical activity in the workplace, please visit www.ncppa.org.

About the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity

NCPPA is the leading force in the country promoting physical activity and fitness initiatives. We are a diverse blend of associations, health organizations, and private corporations, advocating for policies that encourage Americans of all ages to become more physically active.

This week, a group of the nation’s foremost CEOs, academics and healthcare leaders will gather at the emerging life science cluster in Lake Nona Medical City to generate and exchange ideas that inspire new ways to address healthcare, wellness and sustainability practices in our communities.

The 2013 Lake Nona Impact Forum, taking place Oct. 23 – 25, will explore the roles technology, innovation, collaboration, imagination, wellness and prevention play in health and healthcare by uniting business executives and key innovators from academia, industry, healthcare delivery and government for three days of symposia and informal conversations.

“We are building upon our successful Forum last year and are gratified with the interest we are generating around the activity at Lake Nona,” said Dr. Thaddeus Seymour Jr., president of the Lake Nona Institute and host of the 2013 Lake Nona Impact Forum. “With this incredibly diverse group, we are confident we can come up with innovative programs and solutions, which can be tested and expanded to additional markets around the world.”

Given the state of healthcare and its uncertainty, a broad group of executives has been assembled from academia, industry, healthcare delivery and government to present their insights and solutions for improving our nation’s health. This year’s speakers and panelists include U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, Cleveland Clinic Chief Wellness Officer Michael Roizen, NBC News Chief Medical Editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Clinton Health Matters CEO Ginny Ehrlich, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Policy Advisor Susan Dentzer, UBS Chief Investment Officer Alex Friedman, GE Healthcare IT and Performance Solutions President and CEO Jan DeWitte, Florida Blue Chairman and CEO Pat Geraghty, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, and U.S. Senator Mel Martinez.

The three-day conference will deliver a series of presentations and conversations held in the heart of Lake Nona’s emerging health and life science cluster. Lake Nona Impact Forum conference venues include the University of Central Florida Health Sciences Campus, the Sanford?Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona, Nemours Children’s Hospital and the University of Florida Research & Academic Center. These institutions, along with the Orlando VA Medical Center (opening next year), represent an economic bright spot in the state with $2 billion invested in facilities and infrastructure over the last seven years alone. The 7,000-acre master planned community of Lake Nona is being developed by Tavistock Group, a private investment organization.

The 2013 Lake Nona Impact Forum is presented by the Lake Nona Institute and GE, along with sponsors: Johnson & Johnson, Florida Blue, Cisco, UCF College of Medicine, UBS, the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, Tavistock Foundation, UF Research Institute, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Nemours, Sharecare, Under Armour, Canyon Ranch, and Insurance Office of America.

Inspired by the influential Aspen Institute, TED Conferences and the Clinton Global Initiative platforms, the Lake Nona Impact Forum was founded and organized by the Lake Nona Institute, a nonprofit community-focused organization committed to creating sustainable, healthy communities and advancing the quality of life by exploring the intersections of wellness, sustainable living and education.

To learn more about Lake Nona and the Lake Nona Institute, visit www.LearnLakeNona.com and www.LakeNonaInstitute.org.

Partners will use Lake Nona as test bed to advance technology, health and wellness initiatives

Lake Nona recently announced three major private investment collaborations with Cisco, Wellness & Prevention, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, and Florida Blue, Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, at its inaugural Lake Nona Impact Forum. A select group of than 300 thought leaders representing academia, industry, healthcare delivery and government convened to exchange ideas for improving national health and wellness.

The newly cemented sponsorships are focused on advancing Cisco, Wellness & Prevention, Inc. and Florida Blue technology, health and wellness initiatives using the 7,000-acre Lake Nona community as a living laboratory to test products, study ideas and drive positive results. Located within the city limits of Orlando next to the airport, Lake Nona was designed to offer quality education, environmental amenities, diverse workspaces, retail centers, a life sciences cluster and homes for more than 25,000 planned residents.

Cisco and Lake Nona

Visiting Lake Nona in October, Cisco CEO John Chambers recognized the community as the first U.S. “Iconic City” within Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities initiative. Lake Nona joins Barcelona, London, Skolkovo in Russia, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Chengdu / Chongqing in China and Songdo, South Korea as one of nine Iconic Smart+Connected cities in the world. In partnership with Cisco, Lake Nona will continue to build over the next 15 years a community with the highest technological and environmental standards by providing unprecedented connectivity.

“When you build out a community like this with this infrastructure, it’s going to have legs for decades in terms of sustainability,” Chambers said.

Lake Nona, becoming recognized as the fastest growing innovation cluster in North America, was selected by Cisco due in part to its robust high-speed technology infrastructure, which also has earned recognition from the White House U.S. Ignite Partnership as one of the few U.S. communities to successfully deploy a gigabit “no limits” network.

The Lake Nona technology infrastructure will be a key enabler for innovations in areas including healthcare, community safety, lifelong learning and education, intelligent workplace environments and innovation and experience incubation centers.

“If you can have unlimited computers, unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth at a reasonable price, would you run healthcare, would you run a city, would you run a Lake Nona the same way?” said Anil Menon, Cisco’s president of globalization and Smart+Connected Communities.

In addition to its emerging technology, Lake Nona demonstrated that it also will be a leading force in health and wellness innovation through its healthy living efforts and its innovative life sciences cluster known as Lake Nona Medical City, offering leading-edge medical research, treatment and education.

Wellness & Prevention, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson Company, and Lake Nona Institute

Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky identified Lake Nona as a great opportunity to effectively study and measure the health and wellness of an entire community over the course of multiple years. Wellness & Prevention, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, is launching the Lake Nona Life Study, which will be among the first longitudinal research projects of its size and scope that will transform the Lake Nona community into a living laboratory for exploring health challenges and testing new initiatives that could have a measurable impact on population health and wellness for generations to come.

The results of the Lake Nona Life Study will create a new database of health information that may spur additional research projects to track and determine the factors that impact health and wellbeing.

“Everyone is looking for a sustainable business model around wellness,” said Sanjay Gupta, president of Wellness & Prevention, Inc. “The Lake Nona Life Study carves out a unique opportunity for business, academia, government, and medicine to unite on this issue and collect data beyond traditional channels. It’s a rare chance to study wellness on a larger scale and care for individuals and communities one person at a time.”

Florida Blue and Lake Nona Institute

Florida Blue announced its plans to support Lake Nona’s health and wellness ecosystem as a founding partner of the Lake Nona Institute, and will initially begin testing innovative integrated consumer and provider experiences. The goal is to drive improved collaboration between these parties to produce better health for individuals and communities while improving overall quality and lowering costs.

Patrick Geraghty, chairman and CEO of Florida Blue, said the Lake Nona announcement “is a true testament to our commitment to meaningful and barrier-shattering modernization in healthcare that will prove beneficial to all. We are extremely excited to be on the ground floor of this type of innovation in the state of Florida, and we look forward to sharing the results of our efforts with the entire healthcare community.”

Other 2012 Lake Nona Impact Forum Highlights

Partnerships were a recurring theme of the three-day event that brought business executives and innovators through several Lake Nona Medical City facilities that served as conference venues, including the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and the newly opened University of Florida Academic & Research Center.

Through empowering conversations and encouraging solutions offered by healthcare leaders, the Lake Nona Impact Forum addressed some of the industry’s toughest challenges as well as its biggest opportunities, from the era of digital medicine and the consumerization of healthcare to consumer engagement and population aging.

“The political, economic and clinical landscape has evolved,” said Bill Frist, former U.S. Senate majority leader. “We need to think differently about how to move our organizations, and the broader healthcare economy, in the right direction faster.”

Daniel Kraft, executive director of FutureMed and a Stanford- and Harvard-trained physician of internal medicine and pediatrics, acknowledged the ways technology can reinvent healthcare delivery in ways hardly imagined yet.

“One day the idea of going down to your doctor’s office will be as foreign as going to your local Blockbuster,” he said. “Instead of dragging your three-year-old to the pediatrician, you can look in the ear, take a picture and send it to your doctor for diagnosis. Your colonoscopist can fly through your colon like Luke Skywalker using a virtual colonoscopy.”

Kraft said technology also has the potential to improve prevention and wellness with devices in development such as blood glucose meters and blood pressure cuffs that attach to smart phones and email readings to the patient’s doctor.

Michael Hodin, executive director of the Global Coalition on Aging, addressed the need to develop solutions to empower the world’s aging population to remain economically productive, engaged and active.

“Age-friendly cities, age-friendly universities and age-friendly workplaces are examples of ways to cater to the aging population,” he said. “Lake Nona is the best example I’ve seen.”

The event closed with an expanded community breakfast with delegates and other attendees exploring how everyone can play a role in improving health and the ways Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo and Darden are increasingly embracing health and wellness strategies in the food industry.

PepsiCo, whose products are consumed by 1.2 billion people on a weekly basis, established its Global Nutrition Group two years ago to introduce more nutritionally related products into its portfolio. The company has worked to remove more than 50 billion calories with sweetener technology and also cut more than 700 metric tons of salt from its snack chips.

“Our company has an immense global footprint, and with it comes a huge responsibility,” said PepsiCo’s chief scientific officer Mehmood Khan, who oversees the company’s Global Nutrition Group and leads companywide research and development. “It’s not just thinking about the brand, it’s thinking about the future that comes with it.”

For additional information about the Lake Nona Impact Forum and the Lake Nona Institute, visit: www.LakeNonaInstitute.org.

Click to view a video recap  or a photo gallery of the event.