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    • Oracle, Meharry Medical College Forges to Build Health Center in Nashville
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    Oracle, Meharry Medical College Forges to Build Health Center in Nashville

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    Meharry Medical College in Nashville has partnered with Oracle Corp. to open a “healthcare innovation center” in Nashville and provide training opportunities for medical students with Oracle’s cloud and artificial intelligence software.

    Oracle Health President Dr. David Feinberg, and President Meharry, Dr. James Hildreth, announced the partnership with The Tennessean at the Oracle Health Summit at the Grand Hyatt Nashville on Tuesday. Feinberg and Hildreth said their two institutions aim to work together to better medical education and improve the state of community health care in Middle Tennessee.

    Specifically, Feinberg said Oracle is interested in addressing the social determinants of health and how life expectancy can vary greatly by zip code. Across Tennessee, life expectancy ranges from 74 to 81 years in different counties, according to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

    “Health care is about people taking care of people, and you have to trust each other,” Feinberg said. “When you go into these types of communities, the key way to do it, in my humble opinion, is with a trusted partner, and I found that in Meharry.”

    Meharry has been a mainstay of Nashville’s medical community since it was founded as the first black medical school in the South in 1876, while Oracle is one of the newest major players in town. The company has been in the process of establishing a base in Nashville since 2021, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison just announced earlier this year that his company’s $1.2 billion riverfront campus will be its “world headquarters”, relocating from Austin, Texas.

    The new East Bank Oracle headquarters is less than three miles away from Meharry Medical College and will be within reasonable walking distance once Oracle pedestrian bridge is built over the Cumberland River — from the Oracle campus at Neuhoff district.

    In addition to the health innovation center, Meharry and Oracle will create a joint research collaboration and wellness center in Nashville. Research will particularly focus on the development of new solutions in precision or personalized medicine, health informatics and population health.

    Hildreth said Meharry was originally founded to address health inequities in Nashville in 1876, and the partnership with Oracle will allow the school to continue that work.

    “It’s time to do what we’re doing in a modern context, and a modern context means using technology to address access issues, quality of care issues, even how we educate future physicians,” Hildreth said. “This is my tenth year as president and it is probably one of the most exciting days of my career as president.”

    to The last Oracle conference in Nashville in June, Executive Vice President of Revenue Operations Jason Maynard explained the company’s plans to get involved in training and recruiting future employees while they are still in school. This includes helping students become familiar with Oracle software.

    Feinberg said full details of the partnership, which is a non-binding agreement, are still being worked out. Oracle and Meharry officials plan to talk with community stakeholders, from local health care providers to public officials, to inform their next steps in the coming weeks.

    Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at [email protected]. To support his work, subscribe to The Tennessean.

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