Therapeutic Endoscopy is a surgery through natural ways. It has deeply altered the prognosis of certain diseases. Its minimal invasivity drastically reduces after-surgery traumas as well as the length of hospital stay.
The further development of this advanced medicine requires the development of specific tools that are different from those of conventional surgery
In order to develop this medicine of the future, the physicians of the Gastro-enterology Laboratory of the Erasmus Hospital, and the engineers of the Bio-, Electro- and Mechanical Systems (BEAMS) department of the ULB, have been working together since 2003 to design new surgical instruments.
This collaboration has set up a non-profit structure (Brussels Medical Device Center) and a quality system meeting international standards to accelerate the development of medical devices in the field of endoscopy, to promote the transfer of research results on medical devices to the industrial world and to provide hospitals with instruments capable of alleviating rare diseases that have remained without solutions or effective treatment.
In addition to technological and therapeutic advances, these projects contribute to the creation of high value-added local jobs, ideally filled by biomedical engineers.