Amsterdam UMC
“In Amsterdam we have educated people, good infrastructure and people are internationally oriented.” Find out how Amsterdam UMC has joined forces with major institutions to stay on the cutting edge of healthcare.
Talent and tech in Amsterdam
Amsterdam UMC, merged in 2018 from the VU University Medical Center and AMC, is a leading medical centre that combines complex patient care, scientific research and education. Collaborating with Amsterdam’s wealth of research institutes, doctors at Amsterdam UMC have put their focus on cancer as well as to neurological and cardiovascular diseases. Professor Otto Hoekstra explains, “We are getting into closer contact with the guys who are treating patients and together, in a multidisciplinary way, we’re defining what the best treatments for individual patients could be.” Professor Guus van Dongen adds: “There are many knowledge institutes in Amsterdam, and the fact that Schiphol is nearby means that when we collaborate with international companies it is much more attractive for them to come and go within a single day.”
Joining forces for better patient care
The goal of the merger of the medical centres of the two Amsterdam universities is for Amsterdam UMC to reach an even higher quality of patient care. This will be achieved by clustering specific patient groups in one of the two locations, enabling sustainable access to complex patient care.
State-of-the-art Imaging Center
Part of Amsterdam UMC is the VU’s state-of-the-art Imaging Center, which brings together the existing infrastructure in one building. Recent developments in imaging technology are changing the way medical practitioners tackle disease, making it easier to find tumours and other diseases and track the high precision treatment of them. With MRI scanners that map the body and PET scanners that trace the effectiveness of drugs and hunt out illness, leading institutions are effectively able to peer inside us.
VUmc has one of the world’s most advanced labs for developing tracers – the contrasting agents that are injected into the body and attach themselves to diseased cells. It also has one of the few MRI PET scanners in the world. The cooperative approach of the Imaging Center includes partnerships with private enterprises.
