Future Plan 2050 from German teaching hospital: featuring smart buildings, AI, and robotics

Let’s take a look at the Future Plan 2050 of the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), a teaching hospital of the University of Hamburg and reportedly the largest hospital in Hamburg, to see what the hospital has planned in terms of “smart” buildings, AI, and robotics.

In terms of progress to date, the plan shares how the hospital recently unveiled a series of new buildings, including a prostate cancer centre containing eight operating rooms equipped to support robot-assisted surgeries.

Plans also include the construction of a centre for translational immunology; a biobank to store “around 10 million” tissue samples for research; an S3 laboratory; a new University Heart and Vascular Centre featuring innovative tech including AI and robotics; and a University Cancer Centre and Centre for Imaging, to offer diagnostics and therapies under one roof.

The hospital’s plans for 2050 also incorporate advances in “translational medicine”, or clinically oriented research, helping to translate research findings into clinically applicable knowledge and new diagnostic or therapeutic interventions for patients. It is currently conducting 19 non-commercial clinical trials, including 13 at a national level.

Other advances in medicine being explored at UKE include 3D-printed personalised medications; making individualised and patient-specific dosages and “polypills” combining multiple active ingredients a possibility; robotic surgery in the Clinic for General, Visceral and Thoracic Surgery; and AI in radiology.

Bringing this future outlook to data, a “digital clinical workplace system” is home to all of the hospital’s patient data, and a team have been working on the development of a new system, which will enable the hospital to develop new functions for patient care, and to digitally map clinical processes.

To explore all of Universitatsklinikum Hamburg Eppendorf’s plans for 2050, please click here.

In related news on innovation, DIGITAL, a Canadian global innovation cluster for digital technologies, has announced a commitment worth an estimated $44 million to develop and deploy AI tech, with the aim of supporting healthcare providers and enhancing patient outcomes.

The project picks up on the challenge of slow integration around AI, citing an “urgent, unmet need for well-designed, efficient, and effective AI solutions”, and aiming to offer an “easy-to-implement, integrated AI-driven platform” for healthcare providers.