Research
The University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System is one of the few academic medical centers in the US (and the only one in the State of Illinois) with research faculty across all health sciences colleges. This includes medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, social work, applied health sciences, and public health. From understanding the molecular basis of disease to improving the health of communities, hospital researchers routinely collaborate with researchers at the University of Illinois' Champaign-Urbana campus as well as physicians, nurses, and other health professionals across the health sciences colleges in order to bring the best minds to the challenges of health. This collaboration is yielding new knowledge and, as a result, new methods for advancing patient treatment and care. Our overall research goals are to better help our patients through the following types of collaborative research:
Basic Science
Basic science research is conducted to help doctors better understand what causes a disease, how well current treatments work, and to develop new treatments. It is conducted in laboratories by looking at the cells and the molecular breakdowns of a disease.
Translational
Translational research takes scientific discoveries made in the lab and applies them in realistic ways to people. It provides opportunities to take what we learn in more scientific research and make a difference in our own communities.
Clinical Investigation
Clinical Investigation is research that directly involves people. It includes testing current and new treatments, procedures or preventive approaches.
The eventual outcome of these efforts is developing new approaches to care, better ways to diagnose disease in our patients, and new treatment options that haven't yet been discovered. We are working on this every day in order to improve the care and health of all of our patients. Our h3 link between the research we do as the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the clinical care we provide as the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System means you are treated in our clinics and hospital by the same people who are making the medical breakthroughs in the lab. This also means our patients have unique opportunities to be involved in these studies and to gain access to experts and new treatment options. UI Health's groundbreaking research has earned our medical school the reputation as one of the best for both undergraduate and graduate training, and regularly attracts numerous research grants. Our researchers are recognized internationally as leaders in:
- Alternative, complementary and traditional medicine
- Biotechnology and biodefense
- Cancer biology and therapeutics
- Drug discovery, development and delivery
- Genomics and pharmacogenomics
- Infectious diseases
- Natural products
- Neuroscience
- Patient safety
- Pharmacoeconomics
- And more
