Partner 7

Name: Oslo Universitetssykehus HF, Oslo, Norway
Role: Leader of WP7
Contact person: Prof. Ilangko Balasingham

The institution

Oslo Universitetssykehus HF is the National Hospital of Norway and is the largest medical and medical technology research institution, which constitutes 40% of the research in Norway.

The lab

The Interventional Center is a research and development department, established for advancing the field of image guided and minimally invasive therapy at Universitetssykehus in 1996. Besides state-of-the-art operation suites for videoendoscopy and image guided interventions, it houses the only open magnetic resonance imaging scanner in Scandinavia, which is a custom-designed for minimally invasive therapy. Such facilities have been instrumental in developing new procedures for beating heart surgery and key-hole operations in liver and brain. The center is unique in that doctors and engineers physically located and work together in multidisciplinary groups in a clinical setting. Currently there are 25 researchers, including 6 professors.

Research

The research work at the center focusses on the following three areas: MR, X-ray, ultrasound, video-guided interventions and surgery; Robotics and simulators; and Biosensors, data processing, and wireless body area networks. There are ongoing 31 PhD programs in both medical as well as technical areas, where many of these are in collaboration with other institutions and universities. Furthermore, there are some 15 master students from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and University of Oslo performing with their theses. In addition to patient treatment, several animal procedures are performed by its staff in their operating suites. Lately, two spin-off companies have been established in the areas of biosensors (Alertis Medical AS) and surgical simulators (Simsurgery AS). In addition to several projects funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Nordic Innovation Centre, we coordinate an EU project called ARISER and participate in another EU project called Credo both in the FP6 program.