Medical Valley Center Bamberg officially opened
BAMBERG – Bavaria's Minister of Economic Affairs Hubert Aiwanger and Bavaria’s Minister of Health Melanie Huml opened the new Medical Valley Center Bamberg with an official ceremony in front of approximately 100 very important guests. At the same time, Aiwanger announced funding to the amount of approximately 11.5 million euros in total. Aiwanger: “The Medical Valley Center Bamberg marks a milestone at for Bamberg. With four long-term projects, Bamberg is now receiving a direct link to the Medical Valley medical technology and health cluster. We are thereby sustainably strengthening the excellent innovation ecosystem in the Medical Valley and providing a long-term boost for the entire economic and health region.”
Health minister Melanie Huml: “Our goal is it to offer modern medicine and health care provision throughout Bavaria – in rural areas too. New treatment and support options are to be consistently researched and used for this. I am delighted that we were able to bring four forward-looking projects from the fields of health research and medical technology to the region with the Medical Valley Center Bamberg. What is clear is that digitalisation and innovations in health and care offer enormous opportunities. But it is also clear that we cannot and do not want to replace humans with this but create more freedom for genuine human attention from family members, nursing staff and carers.”
The Medical Valley Center Bamberg is a new application centre in the health sector dealing with the important future topics of digitisation/e-health, care, hygiene as well as education and training. The centre’s content is defined through four projects: the Digital Health Application Center, Mobile Health Lab, Hygiene Technology Competence Center as well as Skills Lab Care and Patient Care. The city of Bamberg had previously successfully implemented a strategy process with support from the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Medical Valley EMN e.V. in order to further expand the strengths in the health industry in a targeted manner. “The completed projects of the Medical Valley Center Bamberg are now carefully tailored to the Bamberg health sector location’s focuses and expertise. They ideally complement the Medical Valley centers in Forchheim and Erlangen and are an ideal catalyst to integrate existing expertise in the region, from other industries such as the automotive sector too, into the health economy and medical technology,” continues Aiwanger.
An innovative model of a digitally supported healthcare system (“Digital Health Ecosystem”) is being developed and scientifically implemented at the Digital Health Application Center (funding amount approx. 3.2 million euros). E-health solutions are to make the progress within the digital health sector tangible and perceptible using the example of selected pathologies and medical technology applications.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Mobile Health Lab (funding amount approx. 2.6 million euros) is working on the development of a generic telemedicine IT platform (“Digital Patient Manager”). Service providers will be networked with each other through this creating an efficient decentralised infrastructure for medical communication.
The HTK Hygiene Technology centre of excellence (funding amount approx. 3.2 million euros) establishes a new centre for application-oriented research in the hygiene sector of national significance in Bamberg. The centre’s goal is to transfer the needs from application into innovative product and process solutions and permanently position itself as a centre of knowledge and excellence within the hygiene sector.
With the Skills Lab Bamberg (funding amount 2.5 million euros), a modern test and training centre is being established for all stakeholders in the health care and patient provision sector. An effective interdisciplinary network of health enterprises, industry as well as self-help and patient groups is to be developed to promote innovations, among other things.
Following the official ceremony, the four Medical Valley Center Bamberg projects presented their research areas and fields of work during three symposia at a high-calibre specialist congress attended by approximately 400 participants from science, industry, health care, patients and interested citizens.