Deborah German, Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean, University of Central Florida – College of Medicine

April 2026 — Invest: sat down with Deborah German, vice president for health affairs and dean of the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, to discuss how UCF is expanding healthcare talent pipelines, applying new technology responsibly, and building statewide training capacity amid tightening funding. “The point is not to build technology that looks good in theory, but to develop tools that clinicians can actually use,” German said.

How has the past year been for UCF’s College of Medicine, and how does that experience reflect the broader state of academic medicine and healthcare systems today?

The past year has been a year of great opportunity and great challenges. Every great challenge presents with it a great opportunity, and we have aggressively reached for those opportunities.

If I think about what has most impacted us, I would put it in three categories: human capital, technology, and capital. Human capital is our workforce and the mounting healthcare workforce needs. Technology includes AI, biotech, robotics and more. Capital is the actual dollars available for healthcare, education, and medical research. The world is moving very fast, and we have seen significant change in all three areas.

On the workforce side, we are all painfully aware of the need for an expanded healthcare workforce — doctors, nurses, physical therapists, social workers, you name it. That demand creates an opportunity, and at UCF we have seized it. We opened a new College of Nursing building on our Lake Nona campus, and nurses are now training right alongside doctors. We have built interprofessional education, and the College of Nursing has increased the number of students it can train by utilizing new space with new technology.

Training more physicians is harder because the infrastructure investment is so large, so we have focused on growing graduate medical education. When people graduate from medical school, they complete residencies and fellowships before they can practice. We partnered with HCA and created 46 residency and fellowship programs across Florida that are currently training more than 720 physicians. Those programs extend beyond one campus, and they help keep physicians in-state, because doctors are most likely to stay where they complete the final stage of training.

How are you approaching AI across education, research, and patient care?

We are using AI in all three missions of the academic health center: education, research, and patient care. We are using it to educate students, hospitals are using it for operational functions like scheduling, and scientists are using it for research. The question we ask is: how can AI make what we do better and less labor intensive, and how do we prevent AI from messing things up?

We cannot ignore AI and still prepare students for the world in which they will practice. If we graduate doctors who do not understand how to use AI or how it can fail, they will not function well in the future environment. So we teach it, we test it, and we use faculty and students to give feedback about what works and what does not.

What’s shifting in terms of research funding, and what does it mean for an academic health center?

We are in a critical moment for financial support, with changes in NIH funding affecting researchers. There will be fewer breakthrough treatments and fewer young men and women pursuing careers in research. Research is the foundation of academic medicine and without robust support, our progress will be slowed. 

Changes in clinical funding affect care. Patients in the affordable care network still need services. Academic health centers are often the safety net for those in need. Our students benefit from seeing the full spectrum of health and disease from patients across our community.

On the education side, federal loan limits for medical students mean many students will need to take on more private debt at higher interest. That changes how students make career decisions and how we support them. Across research, clinical care, and education, the pressure is real, and it requires constant problem-solving. UCF has been one of the least funded medical schools in the nation, so we have long been used to figuring out how to do more with less.

How does Orlando’s global connectivity shape the region’s role in preparedness for infectious disease research and pathogen surveillance?

Orlando’s connectivity makes preparedness especially important. We have visitors from all over the world, and that reality changes the stakes for surveillance and response. We believe that our city is the canary in the coal mine because the world comes to Orlando. If there is a pathogen somewhere in the world, it will come to Orlando.

That means we have to be prepared to recognize threats quickly and to know exactly what to do to prevent spread. We have a team invested in this work with some funding, but not enough to reach the full scale needed . If we detect issues early, we can help prevent them from moving elsewhere in the country, and we can reduce the likelihood of another crisis becoming widespread.

How does UCF’s partnership model show up across hospitals, industry, and emerging fields like aerospace medicine?

We are committed to partnership. Any hospital that wants to partner with us gets a seat at the table. That approach has helped us grow residency training across the state and build relationships that support education, research, and patient care.

Partnership also extends to industry. Our aerospace medicine group is working with NASA and private aerospace companies to improve the health of space travelers. We monitor astronauts’ health before and after flights, and we are working on a clinical model that supports pilots. We see the airport as part of the broader ecosystem around Lake Nona, and we talk about that area not just as a Medical City, but as an aerotropolis, a metropolis that includes an airport.

I have always said our goal is to build a medical school, an academic health sciences center, and a community that is regionally, nationally, and globally relevant. Aerospace medicine expands that ambition and forces us to think even bigger so we are galactically relevant!

How are interdisciplinary efforts with engineering, computer science, and optics translating into practical solutions?

We have medical and technology teams working together through our AI and innovation efforts. Our teaching hospital is an innovation hub within HCA, where new technologies are used, studied, and refined through real-world testing. If a tool succeeds in that environment, it can scale more confidently across the hospital system.

At the university level, we collaborate with optics and photonics, engineering and computer science, and simulation groups to develop new approaches in biomedical science, diagnostics, and care delivery. The point is not to build technology that looks good in theory, but to develop tools that clinicians can actually use.

As you scale and innovate, how do you protect quality in care delivery and education?

That is the most important question. If we create technology that makes life worse, we have wasted time and money and caused harm. The way to reduce that risk is to test technology in the environment where it will be used.

Too often, something is created outside the clinical setting, installed, and then it disrupts workflows, adds burden, and creates new problems. What we do is turn nurses, technicians, and physicians into partners in the testing process. We try new tools, they tell us what fails and what works, and then we refine. We apply the same mindset to education, including how we incorporate AI into training, so we can establish what is effective and what is not.

What would you want the broader business community to understand about Orlando’s healthcare and education trajectory?

Not long ago, there were thousands of acres of empty land near the airport. With the work of many people, we now have an emerging Medical City, an aerotropolis, that is building a reputation and putting Orlando on the map not only for tourism and agriculture, but for healthcare and education. The region has an opportunity to sustain this growth by investing in the workforce, research, and systems that translate innovation into better patient care.The future is ours, it’s real, it’s here, and it’s now.

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