Technology has become an intrinsic part of our lives and increasingly allows holistic, preventive and not least integrative solutions. The focus is on people themselves - not only in their role as patients or athletes. At the same time, the available technological and information technology options have developed rapidly and the acceptance of their use in medicine, health and sports is increasing.
The research focus Health Tech is dedicated to the challenge of combining innovative technologies with trends in medicine, health care, sports and related fields and to develop products and services from them in cooperation with partners from industry and research or to support their further development. The overriding goal is to maintain and/or restore people's health on the one hand, and to promote sport in society through the use of technology and help athletes in top-level sport to achieve first-class performance on the other.
Sport as part of our health is experiencing a technological boom. At the same time, highly monitored athletes are already a reality in elite sports. Data acquisition and data analysis play a central role here and are increasingly being transferred to mass sports. The research focus is already supporting many partners in industry, science and associations both in the application of new technologies in elite sports and in the transfer of these technologies to mass sports. Topics such as artificial intelligence, digital twins or virtual reality play a key role in sports and reflect the competencies of the research fields.
Medicine has relied on the use of robotics and telemanipulators in surgical applications for quite some time. This trend is continuing throughout the healthcare sector, with service and care robots becoming increasingly important. Another growth area is therapy robots, which allow therapy at home and thus enable rehabilitation away from the daily clinical routine.
Medical devices are a fascinating success story at the interface between medical and technological professionals that focuses on improving people's quality of life. One goal of the research focus is to support this field in translational research from the idea to the market-ready product. In particular, the focus is on the development of methods that can improve the efficiency of the development process in this highly regulated field. Digital twins for the product development of technology-based and individualized therapies are as important as technologies for the training of medical professionals and the improved data-driven development of technologies with the involvement of medical professionals in the development process.
If you have any questions regarding this research area, please contact us: healthtech@mci.edu