Aachen Competence Centre for Medical Technology

Network Profile

The objective of the Aachen Competence Centre for Medical Technology (AKM) is to offer a wide range of consultancy services concerning the development of a new product or method in the field of miniaturized medical technology. The aim is to speed up the commercial exploitation of innovative product- and method-related ideas through co-operation with industry and the encouragement of interaction between physicians, engineers and natural scientists.

The region of Aachen excels in medical and technical innovation with its university hospital, the University of Technology of Aachen (RWTH), its associated institutes and external research facilities, as well as with more than 150 medical technology companies, which possess considerable expertise in the field of microtechnology.

To ensure that this potential is mobilized, the AKM will accompany the cooperation between the fields of Public Health, Research & Development, and Industry in the product development process from ideas to commercial exploitation with a range of services. A network of regional service providers supports the work of the Centre by assisting in the establishment of enterprises as well as in the introduction of new products to the market.

In the start-up phase of the AKM, potentials are additionally focussed by a temporary specialization in two medical fields: cardiovascular therapy and tissue therapy using miniaturized components. The aim is to cover a broad range of health care applications with a long-term social and economic benefit. The relevance of the medical field becomes clear if one considers that in the old West German states in 1997 alone, more that 650,000 diagnostic cardiac catheterization examinations and pe-ripheral angiographies were carried out, as well as 200,000 interventions in the field of coronaries and peripheral vessels. In the same year, 92,000 cardiac operations were performed, 70,000 of which were bypass operations and 13,500 were cardiac valvular operations.

New methods in vessel therapy are necessary to lower the complication rate due to breakdown of suture after surgical operations, almost all of which requires further surgery. Estimated costs of up to 1 billion DM per year result from the approximately 700,000 instances of further surgery which are necessary per year. We have reason to hope that by miniaturized control of surgical suture methods, a reduction of these complications will be obtained, which would contribute to the reduction of costs.

Miniaturized components and systems are required for both fields of application, all of which share a high degree of integration of mechanical, electrical, fluidical and optical functions. For the development of such systems, AKM provides the corresponding production engineering and economic expertise.

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Further Information: www.akm-aachen.de/