According to Manuel Desco, a professor in the Bioengineering department at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid (UC3M) and coordinator of the Innovation Platform for Medical and Healthcare Technologies (ITEMAS), the university-hospital link up works like clockwork.
“The hospital is where the needs and problems that are most relevant to medical care are identified and although the ideas are there for a solution they often don’t have the capacity to develop a prototype: but the university does have the technological resources,” he said.
Meeting between the UC3M and the ITEMAS Territorial Commission of Madrid
Seeking to foment scientific-technological cooperation and joint development of projects in the healthcare sector, in mid-November 2014 a meeting was held to introduce university engineers to innovation administrators and healthcare professionals at eight hospitals – Gregorio Marañón, Puerta de Hierro, La Paz, San Carlos, Ramón y Cajal, 12 de Octubre, Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and La Princesa.
During this link up, issues of mutual interest and lines of collaboration for 2015 were announced: medical and biomechanical devices, eHealth, simulation and big data, new technologies for imaging diagnostics and biomaterials and tissue engineering.
Projects in common
Many projects have arisen from the meeting held last year and most of them are currently undergoing evaluation. “Of those that already have the patent we can mention a device developed by the Hospital Ramón y Cajal and UC3M which can perform skin biopsies automatically and save a lot of time (we’ve cut it down from 30 to 5 minutes with lesser need for specialized staff),” said the Bioengineering professor.
He also mentioned another joint project between the Hospital Gregorio Marañón and the university: a training simulator for minimally invasive surgeries.
“In Spain, to get the best results from investment into research, especially in the biomedical area, we need a combination of organizational and technical resources, which in this case would be provided by UC3M, in order to create prototypes and test concepts that demonstrate that what we are proposing actually works,” said Manuel Desco.
The ITEMAS Platform
The ITEMAS initiative, which seeks to encourage innovation in healthcare as a fundamental tool for making the National Health System more sustainable, supports the development of an innovative culture that is necessary to integrate the science-industry system into the field of medical technology.
Source: UC3M
