Media mogul David Geffen, who donated $100 million to the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in 2012, has donated an additional $46 million to continue to fund merit-based scholarships, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from California, Florida, and Minnesota.
- California: The UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine on Monday announced that media mogul David Geffen, the school's namesake, has gifted the school $46 million to continue providing merit-based scholarships. That donation, in combination with a $100 million gift Geffen donated in 2012, will allow 414 students to attend school at UCLA tuition-free (Kohli, Los Angeles Times, 12/2).
- Florida: Broward Health Imperial Point has named Randy Gross as CEO. Gross previously served as COO and chief staffing officer at Kendall Regional Medical Center and as CEO of Plantation General Hospital. He succeeds Jonathan Watkins, who left to become a regional resident at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (Bandell, South Florida Business Journal, 12/4).
- Minnesota: Mayo Clinic has tapped John Halamka, executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center for Beth Israel Lahey Health, to serve as president of its Mayo Clinic Platform, a digital health initiative designed to use artificial intelligence (AI) for its troves of patient data. Halamka is a Harvard professor who has served as a federal health IT official under former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. The news comes a few months after Mayo announced a strategic partnership with Google. According to STAT News, the decision to pick Halamka to lead the Platform "underscores Mayo's eagerness to tap into the opportunities offered by AI and the exploding digital health industry, and its awareness that doing so carries plenty of risks" (Ross, STAT News, 12/3; Kacik, Modern Healthcare, 12/4).