Houston Digestive Health Institute in 2023

Despite many waves of debate and piecemeal reforms, the U.S. health care system remains largely the same as it was decades ago and needs innovative changes. In partnership with the UTHealth McGovern Medical School (UTHMMS) and Memorial Hermann Hospital -Texas Medical Center (MHH-TMC), the Ertan Digestive Disease Center (EDDC) activities continue to be progressively successful, delivering productive and cutting-edge in academic practice, research, and postgraduate education since the Center's opening in 2012.

The Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition Division of the UTHMMS delivers high-quality, specialized care to patients from nine different countries, fourteen states, and referrals from all over Texas with a true multidisciplinary and integrated approach.

As part of an academic health center, we have a robust research enterprise aimed at developing the latest treatments and diagnostics for our tertiary referral patients. The EDDC and UTHMMS Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition Division support an active research program and maintains close ties with the Clinical Research Unit of the UTHMMS and the National Institutes of Health for clinical and translational research. Our academic experts publish more than 40-50 articles annually in well-respected peer-reviewed medical journals and have presented more than 50 studies annually at local and national meetings.

The GI fellowship program at UTHMMS is approved by the Accredited Council for Graduate Medical Education. Only 4 fellows are selected from over 600-700 applicants annually. Our 12 GI fellows rotate to the MHH-TMC, the EDDC and the Lyndon Baines Johnson General Hospital. These affiliations provide GI fellows with exposure not only to a large and diverse population, but also superb endoscopic and clinical reasoning and research training by renowned faculty in gastroenterological and liver diseases.

The Houston Digestive Health Institute has been established by the outstanding UTHMMS academicians in gastroenterology, hepatology, liver transplantation, GI and bariatric surgery, GI pathology and GI anesthesiology to improve academic value-based practice, productive research, and well-organized postgraduate education.