Today, the new MST Hospital officially opened its doors. The University of Twente congratulates the MST on the completion of its new building. At the official opening ceremony, Victor van der Chijs, the president of UT’s Executive Board, presented the MST with a voucher worth €10,000 that can be used for training in the ECTM, the high-tech medical simulation centre on the University of Twente campus. Van der Chijs: ‘The University of Twente and the MST have been working closely for a long time. We are working together on improvements in patient care. The University of Twente warmly congratulates the MST’s management and staff on this wonderful new location.’
A great deal of work has been done in recent years on designing and constructing the new MST. Today, the hospital was officially opened. The opening ceremony was held at Koningsplein in the centre of Enschede. After the ceremony, visitors from the region could visit a ‘Healthcare Market’ inside the MST to find out what kind of healthcare services the new hospital will be providing. Doctors held demonstrations on, for example, how operations are carried out, and they explained the medical care they will be providing and the importance of specialist care for the region. Visitors could also find out about new scientific developments and technological innovations in medicine, from scientists at the University of Twente and the MST.
Partnership
The University of Twente and the MST have been working together intensively for many years. Students of the university work in the MST as part of their internships, and various specialists at the MST also hold professorships or endowed chairs at the university. There is also extensive collaboration in terms of research. For example, the MST and UT are working together on the development of an 'electronic nose' to detect lung cancer, 'smart glasses' that will allow Parkinson's patients to walk better and a new painless method for detecting breast cancer in young women.
The ‘Pioneers in Healthcare’ innovation fund
In 2014, the MST, Twente Hospital Group (ZGT) and the University of Twente established a joint innovation fund: Pioneers in Healthcare. This fund was established to encourage research collaboration between medical specialists from the ZGT and the MST, working with researchers from the University of Twente. Together with healthcare provider Menzis, these partners make €500,000 available annually for innovative projects at the interface between healthcare and technology. The fund encourages and enables medical specialists and scientists to work together at an early stage of research. The idea is that by focusing on the needs of actual clinical practice, it is possible to develop more innovative technologies that will ultimately benefit patients and to rapidly develop new and useful applications for existing technologies.
