TValley 2011
Description
On Tuesday 19 April 2011, Stichting Mechatronica Valley Twente, in association with Powered by Twente and KIVI NIRIA, is organising its TValley congress for the eighth time. This time, the theme will be innovations and business around high-tech systems in medical devices. Entrepreneurs and researchers in the East Netherlands are increasingly focusing their product and process innovation on medical applications. After all, global trends in healthcare offer opportunities for good business cases, while the high-tech manufacturing industry can successfully use its broad knowledge and various technologies for medical applications. It makes high-tech & medical a healthy and promising combination.
Med-tech ecosystem
The TValley congress illustrates the 'medical' opportunities for the high-tech manufacturing industry with cases of successful 'high-tech-med' cooperation in the Netherlands. The East Netherlands region, for instance, hosts a fertile 'med-tech' ecosystem, with (academic) hospitals, healthcare institutions, universities and companies working together under the Innovation Platform Twente and Health Valley, with centres of gravity in Enschede and Nijmegen. At the University of Twente, the research institutes MIRA (biomedical technology and technical medicine), MESA+ (including lab-on-a-chip) and IMPACT (medical and rehabilitation robotics) have a medical focus. Numerous high-tech companies also do medical product development.
Growth Markets
Topics covered during the congress include image-guided intervention & therapy (IGIT), tissue technology, medical instrumentation and lab-on-a-chip. IGIT, for instance, is a key growth market. Indeed, the rise of minimally invasive procedures requires smart imaging, as the surgeon no longer has a direct view of his actions in the patient's body. In a field like cancer therapy, a breakthrough of IGIT is also expected. Strongly emerging is also tissue engineering, for example for building complex 3D structures of blood vessels, among others. This is done with rapid prototyping techniques, such as stereolithography, originating from the high-tech industry. Makers of precision instruments can use their expertise in eye surgery, among others. The revolutionary lab-on-a-chip is made with techniques from semiconductor manufacturing; the mini-laboratory, from strong research groups in Twente and Nijmegen, finds diverse applications for medical diagnostics
9.30 Reception University of Twente, De Waaier (building 12)
10.00 Opening
10.15 Start presentations Philips Healthcare, Wim Crooijmans
Image guidance for minimally invasive procedures
12.00 Presentation KIVI-NIRIA/
UT thesis award
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Presentations University of Twente, Prof. Dr. Dirk W. Grijpma
Flexible and elastic tissue engineering structures based on TMC networks
15.00 Break
15.30 Presentation MVT prize
15.45 Presentations University of Twente, Prof. Dr. Ir. Albert van den Berg
16.45 Extended drinks
Location
The Range
Organiser
Eastern Region
Twente Mechatronics Valley Foundation
Name and contact details for information
Elfride Dijkstra
Register via
Elfride Dijkstra
kiviniria@utwente.nl