University of Tennessee Health Science Center officials said they’ll get to work on the school’s multi-disciplinary simulation building “as fast as we can” if the Legislature approves a $24.1 million funding request.

Gov. Bill Haslam requested the funds for the building in his 2013 budget, which he unveiled during his State of the State address Monday in Nashville.

The simulation facility would be similar to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Experiential Learning & Assessment where students and trainees practice medicine on human simulators, smart mannequins that can produce real medical symptoms.

“In the same sense that pilots have to go in a simulator, modern education says we have to simulate all sorts of medical encounters and medical procedures that physicians, dentists, nurses and pharmacists go through,” said Dr. Steve Schwab, UTHSC chancellor.

Educators use these simulators to mimic real-world disasters or emergencies, both in and out of a health care facility.

The facility will not compete, he said, with the nearby Medical Education & Research Institute, which uses real, donated human specimens for advance training and research by physicians and engineers.

Schwab said the university’s new facility will be “multi-disciplinary” as it will bring simulators from all over campus into one building. Multi-disciplinary training in general, however, will begin on the campus in the next six months, he said.

“One of the expectations of modern education is that health care is a team sport, that you can’t educate health care professionals in a vacuum without other professionals,” Schwab said.

The governor’s budget also includes $4 million to tear down three buildings on the university’s Memphis campus: the Feurt Building, which faces Forrest Park from Dunlap; the Beale Building, which is just behind the Scottish Rite building on Union; and Randolph Hall, which is close to the Student Alumni Center on Madison.

Schwab has said the buildings are “not worth investing in” and still need to come down. State funds for the demolition project have been cut for the last three years.

Also, the governor wants to give UTHSC $2 million to renovate the Crowe Laboratory Science Building for faculty offices and support space for the College of Nursing. Some of the money would also be spent to renovate laboratories in the Nash Building and to replace some building systems.

The price of the three projects comes in much lower than a proposed $126.7 million science building at Middle Tennessee State University and a $94 million science lab at University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Haslam’s budget includes $335.4 million in capital and maintenance projects for colleges and universities across the state.

Should the Legislature approve the funding, it will be the most spent for higher education capital projects for more than six years.

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UTHSC in Memphis says proposed simulation building key to medical education