The Institute of Critical Care Medicine was founded in 1961 by Doctors Max Harry Weil and the late Herbert S. Shubin as a non-profit public foundation at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. It was incorporated in the State of California in 1975. The Institute’s predecessor in 1959 initiated the nation’s first cardiovascular resuscitation ward as part of the USC School of Medicine at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, and at the USC sponsored Center of the Critically Ill at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. 

In 1981, the group moved to the University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School . In 1991, the international headquarters of the Institute of Critical Care Medicine was opened in Palm Springs , CA. It is an affiliate of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and the Desert Regional Medical Center of Palm Springs and the University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School. Dr. Weil continues professional appointments at USC, Northwestern University Medical School, University of Pittsburgh, and at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage.

With the completion of the new international headquarters in Rancho Mirage, the Institute moved to its current headquarters in 2004. At the end of 2006, Dr. Weil retired from the administrative duty. To honor his substantial contributions to the Institute, based on the recommendation of the Francis Berger Foundation, the Board of Trustees of the Institute renamed the Institute to The Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine

The Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine is recognized as a comprehensive international center of medical and biomechanical engineering research in Critical Care and resuscitation medicine. It provides in-house state-of-the art medical and biomedical engineering laboratories. The medical research laboratories include cell biology laboratory, biochemistry laboratory, small animal laboratory and a pre-clinical large animal laboratory.

Collaborative clinical research has been arranged with major university medical centers and especially with former trainees and associates. Such collaborative programs have been sponsored in Trieste, Italy; Toronto, Canada; Basel, Switzerland; Haifa, Israel; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Shanghai and Guangzhou, China; Caracas, Venezuela; Brussels, Belgium; Santiago, Chile; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Slovenia, Czechoslovakia; Taipei, Taiwan; New York, New York; and Indianapolis, Indiana. To conduct world-wide studies, WICCM is linked by computer to more than 1,000 study beds, gathering valuable patient data for clinical research on critical illnesses, injuries and especially on the benefits of new treatments.  

 Current research projects under investigation at the Institute are dedicated to improving the presently disappointing outcomes of cardiac resuscitation, thus making the most significant advancements in life sustaining medical technology in the world. Major research is on-going not only to improve the outcome of CPR but also circulatory shock, life-threatening heart failure, acute lung failure and overwhelming infections which produce septic shock. The Institute is a major contributor to the medical literature with over 1000 publications. During the last ten years the faculty of WICCM have received more than 30 prestigious awards from different medical organizations for their outstanding innovative research work.

The Institute has been awarded 24 U.S. patents. Research continues in medical engineering for the development of more effective life-saving and "humane" devices for intensive care units and portable CPR defibrillation devices. Also, programs are underway addressing the ethical and human components of life-saving medical care in intensive care units.

The Weil Institute has trained, sponsored and funded more than 350 young physicians and postdoctoral students from all over the world over the last 40 years through the Institute Fellowship Training Program. These fellows have been introduced to the specialty of Critical Care Medicine and CPR research. This is a two year program of study after which the fellow returns to his/her home institution to become an academic leader. There is an outstanding number of the Weil Institute’s former fellows who are now international leaders in this important field of medicine.

The Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine and the USC School of Medicine presented the first post graduate critical care educational symposium in the world, called The Annual Symposium on Critical Care, Trauma and Emergency Medicine. Now in its 48^th  year, the next symposium will take place April 11-15, 2010 in Rancho Mirage, California, with the world's top decision makers in life-saving emergency medicine in attendance. Over the past 48 years, medical specialists committed to critical care, along with anesthesiologists, trauma surgeons, cardiologists, pulmonologists, emergency medicine specialists and allied health professionals from around the world attended with great enthusiasm. These post-graduate courses offer in-depth review of new concepts and methods basic to competent care in a clinically practical, multidisciplinary symposium. More than two thirds of these multidisciplinary physicians and allied professionals return after attending in previous years.

The Weil Institute also organizes the Wolf Creek Conferences, with world top experts on resuscitation conferring since 1996.  

Community programs centered in the Coachella Valley to improve life-saving cardiac resuscitation include the 911 Plus program, initiated by the Institute in 1994. It was put in place with a goal of increasing the survival rate of out-of-hospital deaths from cardiac arrest by training 25,000 Coachella Valley residents. This is now being accomplished through CPR training and counseling on the placement and use of Automated External Defibrillation (AED) units. This effort is to be considered a research project as well with national significance to semi-rural communities with large senior populations. As a result of initial work, 2000 high school students have been trained, all first responder fire engines within Riverside County are now equipped with AEDs, and the Institute instructors have trained the staff and residents of 25 large private residential communities in CPR with AEDs placed at convenient locations. This population served represents nearly 20,000 people. Other groups such as the staff of city government buildings, museums and theaters have been trained for a total of another 400 persons.