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TechMed Summer School Leiden 2023

Technology and Clinical Care: Friend or Foe?

  • 3 – 6 July, 2023

  • LUMC, Leiden, the Netherlands

Registration

The wish to develop a “TechMed Summer School” is inspired by the strong conviction that on one hand technological developments already have changed healthcare immensely, and will keep transforming healthcare and drive innovation to improve personalized care, patient safety and quality of intra- and extramural healthcare. And in the nearby future no advancements in healthcare is imaginable without the aid of innovative technologies and/or basic sciences such as molecular biology, physics or chemistry. On the other hand, the integration of innovative technologies and technological research in health care, and insight in the immediate applicability in patient care, is still too limited and is not yet as widely supported as we need it to be to deliver personalized and value-based health care.

The technological development in health care is one that is unstoppable and one that we will háve to and wánt to relate to, with respect to clinical practice, education and research. To remain a pioneer in fast-developing technological innovations, it is extremely important that young talented professionals are brought together. 

In this Summer School, participants with different professional backgrounds are brought together in a short, circumscribed, intensive and inspiring program, where they will collaborate and will become aware of the bridge function that they are going to fulfill while delivering personalized high-quality care.

Furthermore, and importantly, it is still a fact that these professionals we are aiming at in this Summer School program (i.e. (post) Master students in Medicine, Technical Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Computer sciences, PhD students, post-docs, technical medical specialists) do not find each other easily by themselves but will need each other in the nearby future as collaborating colleagues to jointly shape the development and application of innovative technologies in health care.

This Summer School would be unique in its kind: there is still no (or very limited) offer of educational programs involving the integration of medicine and technology nor involving the direct applicability of technological innovations in health care, particularly for professionals who should become the bridge builders after their academic education.

The program of the “TechMed Summer School” creates the conditions for the above vision.

Scope

The goal of the program is to stimulate and inspire the future professionals to integrate solutions in health care for the unmet needs of the patient throughout the patient’s journey, and to apply and develop high potential technology that can contribute to these solutions.

The challenge will be to link the latest technologies directly to applications in the clinic. In addition, it will also be discussed extensively by leaders in the field and the participant what “barriers and facilitators” are at this interface of medicine and technology and what “barriers and facilitators” are in the direct implementation of technology (think not only of purely medical or technological barriers, but also of ethical and legal barriers).

By the way in which the program is structured and by opening it up to participants with different professional backgrounds, professionals will be challenged this week to look beyond the boundaries of their own field. Material will be available online and a community will be created that will also offer the opportunity to stay in touch with professionals from one’s own field and other fields after the Summer School week. The program consists of theoretical and practical, hands-on parts. In addition, participants will be challenged, in small groups, to elaborate medical-technological questions in a research project and present them to each other.

Learning Objectives

The participants will gain insight in different technological innovations for patient care and in particular the direct clinical applicability. As a result, they will be able to form a well-considered opinion about applications of technology in healthcare (they can weigh the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies and select optimal choices), contribute to future developments and get concretes idea about potential interprofessional partnerships.

  • Obtain up-to-date knowledge on various substantive themes, which the participants can translate directly to their own field of work.

  • Insight into the way in which direct colleagues or other clinical or technical professionals look at the integration of clinical care and technology and what the advantages and disadvantages, and potential possibilities and barriers are. With this insight itself they can better analyze a medical technological problem and make optimal choices.

  • Insight into the way in which direct colleagues or other healthcare or technical professionals look at the directly applicable implementation of technology in the care and what potential possibilities and barriers are. And with this insight itself a future technological challenge can be analyzed and solutions can be designed and implemented.
  • The future professionals consider the intramural and extramural needs of the patient (and/or physician) in diagnostics, therapeutics and/or compensatory tools in healthcare to fulfill the patients unmet needs during the patient’s journey.