History

The Health Care Engineering Systems Center (HCESC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides clinical immersion and fosters collaboration between engineers and physicians. We design collaborative solutions to improve health care outcomes utilizing our expertise in simulation technologies, smart health systems, data analytics, human factors, and medical robotics.

HCESC was established in 2014 as a research center housed under the Coordinated Science Laboratory in The Grainger College of Engineering. We have grown as a place where engineering meets medicine in innovative ways, playing leadership roles in advancing simulation, health data analytics, medical robotics, and clinician education. One of the most important activities of our center is managing the Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (ARCHES) endowment, which was established in 2014 by a $62.5 million gift. Jump ARCHES is a partnership between Jump Simulation and Education Center at OSF HealthCare in Peoria and HCESC. The endowment provides direct access to competitive grants for engineers and clinicians of every discipline between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, OSF HealthCare, and University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria to band together and solve problems in the world of health care. Proposal requests are accepted twice annually. Since its inception, Jump ARCHES has provided over $2 million through an internal grant mechanism to fund over 70 proposals.

In 2019, the Jump ARCHES partnership was expanded with new commitments of $50 million, backed by a total of $112.5 million in endowment support. This multifaceted expansion included a $25 million gift from the DiSomma Family Foundation to the endowment pool held within the OSF HealthCare Foundation, an additional $12.5 million commitment from the OSF HealthCare Foundation, and an equivalent $12.5 million in endowment support from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.