Let’s shape the future of health!
The TU Delft, the highest ranked university of technology of the Netherlands, and Erasmus MC, the largest university medical centre in the Netherlands, together have the expertise, resources, facilities and drive to profoundly impact on the future of health and healthcare in the Netherlands and beyond. We move beyond traditional ways of collaboration to a new way of joining forces.
As a kick-off of our convergence initiative, 34 post doctoral research positions are available in the following themes:
Convergence flagships
These are the flagships of the convergence project. Click one to find out more about these convergences, projects and its people.
About this initiative
We move beyond traditional ways of collaboration to a new way of joining forces. We share one vision how to promote health and organize modern healthcare and aim to realize this vision by deeplyrooting multidisciplinary collaboration in our organizations. To do so, we invest in the training of and interactions between ourscientists, engineers and healthcare professionals. This enables themto speak a common language, find conceptual links in their expertise and enrich each other’s work.
Together, we can improve health and quality of life, reduce inequalities in health outcomes and stimulate people to manage their own health.
Improving our healthcare system
The Netherlands can be proud of its healthcare system. It is one of the world’s most successful, being both accessible and of high quality. However, it is also expensive and facing formidable challenges including rapidly increasing costs and shortage of workforce. Aging of our population and unhealthy lifestyles are having an impact on our healthcare system. It also takes us a long time to respond to new health challenges. And finally, our healthcare system is not always optimally cost effective, with healthcare professionals experiencing a high administrative workload, leaving them with insufficient time to provide truly personal care to their patients.
Our healthcare system is evolving
In response to these challenges, our healthcare system is rapidly evolving. Healthcare is progressively regarded as part of a broader, inclusive effort. This broader view firstly incorporates nutrition, lifestyle, mental health and environment as important determinants. It further expands the exclusive focus on cure to also include prevention, early risk identification and active participation. Finally, it aims to minimize side effects as well as costs and introduce value as important concept. This evolution demands different medical disciplines to join forces. It also connects to complementary disciplines such as life sciences, natural sciences, and design and engineering disciplines. Through initiatives such as the Medical Delta, TU Delft and Erasmus MC have been on the forefront of such multidisciplinary collaboration.
From collaboration to convergence
Erasmus MC and TU Delft now want to take the next step and create an ecosystem in which world-class scientists from different domains integrate their knowledge, expertise and methodologies to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation to promote health and improve healthcare. We already collaborate in many different areas but want to move from collaboration to convergence of life science, physical science and medical science. We therefore adopt a strategy of synergy in the areas of research, education and innovation. To this end, we have defined common goals, a joint strategy and flagship programmes of joint research. We’re converging traditional disciplines into new fields of research and education. Together, we have the expertise, resources, facilities and drive to make a profound impact on the future of health and healthcare.
