Balgrist University Hospital opens new research center OR-X

Balgrist University Hospital has marked the grand opening of its tenth operating room, which it refers to as Operating Room X, or OR-X for short. OR-X is a national research institute and surgical education and research center. According to a press release, patients will not be treated at OR-X. A fully equipped operating theater and Skills Lab for medical research form the core elements of the new research center. The Skills Lab features six surgical workstations that offer perfect conditions for training courses and larger research experiments involving several participants, the hospital writes.

Teaching will be focused on the use of 3D-printed models, simulators and human preparations. A realistic infrastructure with technical facilities such as intraoperative Artificial Intelligence (AI), navigation systems, surgical robots and applications supported by Augmented Reality (AR) will all be available to enhance surgical training and further development.

A total of 250 guests from the worlds of politics, healthcare and business were invited to attend the inauguration ceremony, which took place over two days on August 24 and 25. In addition to a tour of OR-X, a series of speeches were held by notable figures including Rita Fuhrer, Chair of the Board of the Balgrist Association, Mazda Farshad, Medical Hospital Director, and Thomas Huggler, Managing Director of Balgrist University Hospital, in addition to Martin Hirzel, President of Swissmem, the leading association of the Swiss machinery, electrical and metal industry (MEM industry) and related technology-oriented sectors, and OR-X co-founder Philipp Fürnstahl. ce/ww