DALLAS—The North Texas' vibrant and robust economy has spurred along the recent building and expansion of hospitals and medical office buildings. In North Texas alone, there were 26 projects in the pipeline, valued at nearly $8 billion total, including UT Southwestern Medical Center's $66 million radiation oncology treatment center located at 5323 Harry Hines Blvd.

The department of radiation oncology at UT Southwestern is one of the most comprehensive radiation therapy technology centers in the world. Few centers host such a diverse assemblage of advanced treatment technologies serving as platforms for conducting numerous clinical trials. The UT Southwestern research facility likewise offers investigators a wide range of state-of-the art instrumentation and technologies for basic and translational research.

Inside the new building is some of the field's most technologically advanced equipment for treating cancer. The new UT Southwestern facility is set to start accepting patients on April 3. Perkins+Will Dallas is the facility architect. (Related: Parkland set for redevelopment.)

“There are a couple of stand-outs about this building. First, the design team incorporated trends from the corporate workplace field, think Google office, to enhance collaboration between disciplines–serendipitous ways to encourage clinicians, researchers, etc. to work together in ways that aren't always traditional in an academic healthcare setting,” Ashley Roberts, senior marketing coordinator with Perkins+Will Dallas, tells GlobeSt.com. “Second, the design of the treatment vaults is unique. Usually, a vault has one very expensive door through which patients, caregivers and materials all move. We were able to move the clutter of extra supplies into a 'back of house' corridor by adding a second door to each vault. It makes the patient experience more clean and pleasant, and the cost of the extra door is offset by a reduced footprint in each vault, since they don't have to hold the extra stuff.”