Pompeu Fabra University and the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona (HCB) today signed a framework agreement for collaboration by virtue of which they will cooperate on an on-going basis in the field of research into medical imaging, systems applied to minimally invasive surgery and the management of the biomedical information supporting them.

The agreement, which was signed by Josep Joan Moreso, Rector of UPF, and by Raimon Belenes and Josep M. Piqué, managing director and deputy general manager of the HCB respectively, stipulates that the two institutions will work together to develop a scientific-technical infrastructure in the field of biomedical imaging in Catalonia which is a leader in Europe.

An innovative public-private alliance model, with a firm international commitment which will be managed by the INSIGNEO Barcelona Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Modelling, a foundation to be established in the near future and promoted by UPF, and aims to become an international benchmark in translational R+D+i based on imaging and simulation in the field of medical technologies and minimally invasive surgery.

The objective of this new body, consisting of these two institutions of excellence in the sciences and biomedical and clinical technologies, will be to undertake research and the transfer of knowledge by means of projects involving new imaging biomedical simulation techniques and methods and diagnostic and therapeutic problems with direct applications in the clinical sphere.

Through INSIGNEO, UPF will establish cooperation links with welfare and research organisations and the health field, and in particular with the Barcelona's Hospital Clínic i Provincial, an organisation with which it has already been collaborating for over six years on the European projects for the sixth and seventh Framework Programmes (@neurIST and VPHshare) and on major R+D contracts as part of the CENIT programme (CDTEAM and cvREMOD), and will join the INSIGNEO Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee.

Medical technologies applied to medicine are breakthroughs aimed at a new paradigm of personalised medicine, an expanding research area which will continue to grow in the coming years. Some of these technologies, and those related to imaging and minimally invasive surgery in particular, are linked to computerised planning of surgery, guidance of minimally invasive surgical procedures, medical robotics, computational medical imaging, computational physiological modelling and information systems in health.

The creation of INSIGNEO is the result of the experience obtained by UPF's Centre for Computational Imaging and Simulation Tecnologies in Biomedicine (CISTIB) group, a research centre headed by Alejandro Frangi, ICREA-Acadèmia researcher and a lecturer in UPF's Department of Information and Communication Technologies. Its main research lines are experimental imaging, computational physiology and management of information in the biomedical field.

The Hospital Clínic is a healthcare establishment belonging to the public sector of the Government of Catalonia which provides outstanding high level healthcare, skilled biomedical research and practical teaching of medicine and its associated specialist fields in the health sciences area. It is the healthcare centre with the highest level of scientific production in the biomedical field in Spain and one of the leaders in Europe.