health industry:
The RBTX staff has had the distinction of participating in the design, development, coordination, and facilitation of some 20 tabletop exercises involving both the largest medical center in the world – the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the world’s oldest and largest private cancer center – Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the U.S. News and World Report’s Number 1 and Number 2 ranked Cancer Hospitals in the United States – University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. These 20 tabletop exercises resulted in the collective training of almost 1,950 law enforcement, security, emergency responders, and health providers. Most exercise scenarios examined terrorist efforts to steal and weaponize Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 from hospital research irradiators and blood irradiators. These terrorist radioisotopes of choice would be used to create deadly radiological dispersal devices (RDD) and radiological exposure devices (RED). These TTXs would also examine the city and regional capabilities to effectively deal with radiological incidents and exposures as well as the availability of adequate Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Emergency Room (ER) treatment facilities, operating rooms (OR), critical (intensive) care facilities, and morgue capacities.
The Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas – the largest in the world – contains 50 medical-related institutions, including 15 hospitals and two specialty institutions, three medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and other health-related practices