New KIT Center for Health Technologies Launched

It won't work without informatics: Researchers of the KIT Faculty of Informatics involved in various projects on the digitization of health care.

Digitization not only affects private and working life, it also influences and changes the entire healthcare system. In order to achieve sustainable and medical-technological progress to preserve health, citizens will have to cooperate more and more with physicians and researchers in the future. To promote this transformation process, the "Health Technologies" center (KIT-HealthTech) is being launched at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The aim is to develop digital and technological solutions for medical products from the perspective and for the benefit of society and to focus on their medical needs.

In the future, with the help of e-health, telemedicine, and wearables, the place of medical care will increasingly shift from doctors' offices and clinics to patients' homes. This requires new, digital, and innovative technologies and infrastructures. In the new KIT Center "Health Technologies", more than 153 KIT scientists from a wide range of disciplines such as medical engineering, additive manufacturing, robotics, life sciences, and data sciences are working closely together to accelerate research in this field.

"With the new center, we are actively addressing the needs of the population and the healthcare system. The constant change, for example in the field of digitalization or robotics, offers us many new opportunities in this context," says KIT President Professor Holger Hanselka. "The comprehensive competencies of our researchers help to overcome disciplinary boundaries in order to shape, develop, and establish the healthcare system of the future."

"The broad expertise and diverse activities at KIT form the basis for coordinated expansion of the topic of health technologies," said Professor Oliver Kraft, Vice President for Research at KIT. "In doing so, we primarily want to combine basic research in various fields with applications in health technologies. We are thus responding to the needs of an aging society, supplemented by modern and new offers for research-oriented studying."

Cross-disciplinary collaboration drives research forward

"To develop successful digital and technological solutions for our future global health challenges, we not only need comprehensive technical and social competencies. We also work closely with hospital networks, health insurance companies, and regulatory authorities," adds Professor Andrea Robitzki, division manager responsible for the KIT Health Technologies Center at KIT. "Our vision is that patients and citizens of the region interact directly with physicians and clinics as well as other health care stakeholders in the Karlsruhe region. In this way, we want to create a unique ecosystem."

The KIT Faculty of Computer Science is also represented in large numbers at the new KIT Center and contributes here in particular to research on humanoid robotics, exoskeletons, intelligent wearables, but also on cybersecurity for the protection of health data or digital health.

More information:https://www.healthtech.kit.edu/