With the Operating Room Innovation Center (OPIC) FH Campus Wien has created a test environment for the analysis and optimization of the technical infrastructure, medical equipment and related interdisciplinary processes and procedures. These research findings lead to new optimized OP structures and are thus an important contribution to the health care sector.
The model OP provides users, scientists and companies that manufacture medical devices alike a modern analysis setting. “With the OPIC, we see a chance to make Vienna a leading location for surgical innovations,” says the Head of Department Engineering and OPIC Project Manager, Andreas Posch. In a second construction phase, the OP will be expanded to also house an intensive care unit. Thus, the clinical path of the patients from the imaging diagnostics, to the operation procedure and all the way to the intensive medical and nursing care can be analyzed.
The OPIC promotes interdisciplinary cooperation between technical degree programs, most notably Clinical Engineering, and the degree programs Health and Nursing Science. On an operational side, the following companies are all involved in the OP project: gsm Gesellschaft für Sicherheit in der Medizintechnik GmbH, TRILUX Medical GmbH & Co. KG and MANN + HUMMEL Vokes Air GmbH. They are providing the basic equipment and research facilities as well as human resources. The Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden (OTH) supports OPIC with peer review of scientific results. The Vienna Healthcare Group, the largest health care provider in Central Europe, suggests and encourages research topics. “With the support of the research infrastructure, we have broken new ground. The excellent, funded projects like the OPIC have more than confirmed to us that Vienna as a research location benefits from this research spirit,” says Christian Bartik, Head of the Funding Department in the Vienna Business Agency, which supported the construction and set-up of the Test-OP with 530,000 euros.
