When it comes to developing new medical devices, industry and hospitals should ideally work closely together. For example, to meet the requirements of the European Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), companies need data from hospitals. However, neither doctors nor nursing staff have the capacity to support industry. As part of the funding programme “Aufbau von Industrie-in-Klinik-Plattformen zur Entwicklung innovativer Medizinprodukte” (“Establishing industry-in-clinic platforms for the development of innovative medical devices”), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is supporting the ZIMT project (”Zentralstelle für Innovationen in der Medizintechnik”). The new industry-in-clinic platform AIM (Access for Innovation in Medical technology) is designed to help medical technology companies gain access to hospitals, without adding to the burden of clinical personnel.

A management team has the key role in AIM, acting as an interface with the aim of optimising the value chain. From concept to development and all the way to application, researchers, hospitals and businesses are to work closely together through specific contacts. Project partner Prof. Annette Conzelmann is the research group leader at University Hospital Tübingen, and says: “I am delighted that the platform has created an excellent networking opportunity, and that we can rely on the extensive expertise of the AIM team. This will help develop research products that can successfully reach the application stage.”

The AIM platform is designed to offer industry a ‘one-stop shop’ as a service to simplify product development in cooperation with hospitals and service providers. In this way, innovations should be implemented faster, in more application-based, needs-oriented and efficient ways, thus transferring the clinical and healthcare expertise more effectively to the business side.

The performance and practicability of the services on the platform are examined and further developed in various research and development projects. The specialist areas covered by these BMBF-funded pilot projects range from psychiatry, gynaecology and urology to immunology. Topics include detecting motor impairments in psychoses among young people using sensor-supported assistance systems, researching an AIbased tracking system to treat tumours, developing and evaluating biomaterials for personalised implants, and developing a platform for archiving and supplying medical data, especially imaging data, for clinical diagnostics, experimental work and industrial applications.

Dr. Dagmar Martin, project manager at the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute (NMI) at the University of Tübingen and research partner of one of the planned ZIMT pilot projects, explained during the kick-off meeting in Reutlingen: “The industry-in-clinic platform helps us work more closely with users and manufacturers, and thus bring developments to hospitals faster and based more on the practical reality. As a result, we can make further improvements to healthcare for patients.” Other research partners for planned ZIMT pilot projects include University Hospital Tübingen, Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH, HB Technologies GmbH and Raylytic Software GmbH. BioRegio STERN Management GmbH coordinates the new industry-in-clinic platform AIM.

The BMBF-funded project ZIMT (”Zentralstelle für Innovationen in der Medizintechnik”) (FKZ: 13GW0610) is part of the German Federal Government's Health Research Framework Programme. The funding initiative is part of the medical technology specialist programme through which the BMBF is aiming to improve patient care, expand the capabilities of the health system, and reinforce the innovative strength and international competitiveness of the sector in Germany as an industrial location. The ZIMT project was launched on 1 May 2024 and will end on 30 April 2027. The project volume is 1,345,700 euros, of which 605,565 euros are attributable to funding from the BMBF.