Intensive Care Unit and Health & Care Data Center: New infrastructure for future-oriented teaching at UAS Technikum Wien 

UAS Technikum Wien is breaking new ground and creating a unique learning, research and testing environment in Austria with a new laboratory infrastructure: The ‘Intensive Care Unit (ICU)’ and the ‘Health & Care Data Center (HCDC)’ are setting benchmarks for education in the field of Medical Engineering & Integrated Health and providing students with excellent training opportunities in the use of medical hardware and software.

‘Intensive Care Unit’ with actual and future-oriented medical technology

In contrast to many other training facilities, the ‘Intensive Care Unit (ICU)’ is equipped with medical technology equipment, electrical installations and medical end devices that are encountered in the real world and that meet all the relevant standards. It is therefore possible for students to rehearse in a safe environment the real-life situations that they will encounter later in their professions and to familiarize themselves with all the demands that modern medical technology will be making on them.

Health & Care Data Center’ – successful combination of hardware and software

Medical technology is no longer possible without software. That is why the ‘Health & Care Data Center’ was launched as a special highlight. UAS Technikum Wien is the first domestic educational facility to be registered as a producer of software for physicians and to be given access to the GIN (Gesundheitsinformationsnetz – Health Information Network), which is also known as the e-Card system. For the first time, the details of a dummy patient were entered into the new FHIR server at UAS Technikum Wien using the e-Card system. Students in Austria are now able to benefit from the unique opportunity of being able to visualize data collected by medical equipment and to test practical usage along the entire chain – from the treating physician to the outpatient clinic to intramural hospital scenarios. UAS Prof. DI Dr. Johannes Martinek, Course Director for Biomedical Engineering (Bachelor’s program)and Health and Rehabilitation Technology (Master’s program), said in confirmation of the HCDC’s groundbreaking importance to education: “The optimum interaction between hardware and software will make the difference in medical and rehabilitation technology in future. Our new laboratory infrastructure provides a unique opportunity to create and implement innovative solutions and learn from them.”

Interface to the future of medicine

As a leading technical university of applied sciences, UAS Technikum Wien sees itself as a link to research and development and as a bridge to the future of medicine. “The new opportunities created by medical technology are delivering huge benefits to doctors and patients but are also associated with new risks due to ever denser networking and the growing amounts of data being generated. These are fundamentally changing the demands on technical security in hospitals. We’ve expanded the legally required security checks – STK in Austria – in laboratory environments to STK+, which represents an innovative testing method to make hospitals as secure as they need to be these days. All components from the medical and non-medical context are for the first time being comprehensively combined into a single system for efficient testing,” explained Ing. Lukas Dolesch, Managing Director at gsm-Gesellschaft für Sicherheit in der Medizintechnik, who is responsible for planning medical technology at the ICU as well as for its realization in conjunction with business partners.

Successful cooperation with internal and external partners

As an interface to future-oriented technologies, UAS Technikum Wien operates very closely with internal and external partners. Students are already familiarized with such developments as AI and virtual medical reality during their training. Course Director UAS Prof. DI Dr. Stefan Sauermann explained: “So far, we’ve already been able to successfully share the relevant knowledge with our students. And now there are completely new options at our disposal to develop practical applications within medical environments. The new infrastructure forms the basis for significantly enriching existing cooperative ventures and for breaking new ground.” The degree program has consequently been realized in conjunction with internal partners and maintains close contact with external research and industrial partners. “I’m very pleased that UAS Technikum Wien, with its new and future-oriented infrastructure and as our long-standing partner, is now able to contribute even more to innovation in the healthcare sector,” said DI Dr. Günter Rauchegger, Managing Director at ELGA GmbH, in regard to the productive cooperation.

The lived cooperation within the university for applied sciences is exemplary: Its Medical Engineering & Integrated Healthcare is part of the Department of Life Science Engineering while the HCDC and the ICU IT infrastructure was established and is run in close cooperation with the Department of Computer Science. “Our ICU offers a unique research, learning and testing environment for students and the field of medicine in general as well as for our partners in nursing and industry,” said UAS Prof. Mathias Forjan, PhD – Head of the ‘Medical Engineering & Integrated Healthcare’ competence center of the successful collaboration across departments.

Printable photos of the lab: https://cloud.technikum-wien.at/s/dLw5bDPKCXy9k2T

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