While at Cisco Live! in Orlando, Fla.,  I had the pleasure of leading a tour of the future Veterans Administration (VA)  Medical Center at Lake Nona, along with Dr.  Kenneth Goldberg, the center's new chief of staff.

This amazing facility will be the first new VA hospital to be built in the U.S. in nearly 20 years. When complete, it will be a state-of-the-art medical center that will care for many of the approximately 400,000 veterans and their families living in Central Florida (1.8 million veterans call Florida home).

The 1.2 million square-foot facility in Orange County will be one of the largest hospitals in the VA system. It will have a large multispecialty outpatient clinic, a 134-bed inpatient diagnostic and treatment hospital, a 118-bed nursing home, a 60-bed domiciliary, and a veterans benefit mini service center. Its campus will also include the Simulation Learning Education and Research Network, which is a high-technology, immersive environment that uses simulation to train VA medical personnel.

The VA medical center will be part of the larger Lake Nona Medical City, which is a collaborative endeavor that will centralize medical treatment, research and education and include notable institutions such as the University of Central Florida Health Sciences Campus, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Nemours Children's Hospital, University of Florida Academic & Research Center, and MD Anderson Orlando Cancer Research Institute.

Cisco has a long history of supporting the VA with leading technologies to enable delivery of quality care and services to our nation's heroes.