The use of technology in healthcare and related areas such as sports or gerontology has changed dramatically in recent decades.
One of the main reasons for this change is a fundamental change in society. Society is moving away from an almost exclusively curative approach and moving towards a holistic, preventive and, not least, integrative approach. The focus is on the person themselves and not exclusively on the person in his or her role as a patient. In parallel, the available technological and information technology options have also developed rapidly.
The research area Health Tech is dedicated to the challenge of combining innovative technologies with new approaches in medicine, health care, sports and tourism, and moreover, to develop digital products and services in cooperation with partners from industry and research or to support their development. The overriding goal is always to maintain and/or restore people's health or support their health care in the best possible way.
The field of assistive technologies is dedicated to the research of user-centered, technological approaches to support people who have permanently or temporarily limited physical and/or mental abilities due to a congenital or acquired disability, disease or aging process. In particular, the areas of rehabilitation, prosthetics, mobility and Active Assisted Living play an important role in this context.
For some time now, medical science has relied on the use of robotics and telemanipulators for surgical applications. This trend is continuing throughout the healthcare sector, with therapy and care robots becoming increasingly important. Another growth area is service robots, which are used for monitoring or social interaction beyond physical support.
Health involves much more than just the core medical treatment of individuals. Health and success in sports can be holistically supported by the availability of appropriate technologies and approaches. In high-performance sports, numerous technological solutions that increase training success or enhance safety can already be found. New growth areas are mass sports and the use of health technologies in tourism, but the cluster also focuses on the application of new technologies and methods in high-performance sport.
The basis for a targeted and efficient use of (information) technologies in health care and related areas is their integrated use. The networking of information systems, their interoperability and a trans-institutional use of data play a central role in this context.
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