Critical care institute opens new headquarters

Public Record, The, Mar 15, 2005

The Institute of Critical Care Medicine, an international nonprofit research and educational center, moved from its Palm Springs location into a new 25,000-square-foot home in Rancho Mirage this month with a grand opening staged on March 11.

In addition to radioisotopic and bacteriological/viral laboratories, the facility houses a comprehensive research library, teaching auditorium, engineering laboratory, and offices, especially for the growing number of physician and engineering trainees from all over the world who serve twoyear fellowships at the institute.

The institute, which consolidated its programs from Los Angeles and Chicago in 1992, is headed by its president, Dr. Max Harry Weil, known in the medical profession as the "father of critical care" It was his bedside monitoring concept at the University of Southern California Medical School in the late 1950s that led to the worldwide development of intensive care units at hospitals throughout the world.

The institute was founded in 1961 by Weil and the late Dr. Herbert Shubin. Since moving to Palm Springs, active research and educational programs have yielded more than 400 contributions to medical literature, a number of patents on lifesaving drugs or bedside devices, and completion of training of more than 50 physicians. The institute took a major role in the development and continuing improvement of automatic external defibrillators, clinically improved methods for immediate diagnosis for shock in battle and the portable chest compressor

The institute led the way in the introduction of AEDs throughout the Coachella Valley by training and placing the equipment in gated communities, churches and synagogues, museums, theaters, recreational centers and senior centers, with first-responder emergency medical teams. ICCM has trained more than 6,000 local students in the use of AEDs.

From June 10 to 13, the institute will host the eighth annual Wolfcreek Conference. Past conferences have led to improved resuscitation innovations in the fields of trauma, cardiac arrest, shock and asphyxia.