Welcome to the Center for Biomedicine
The world is changing continuously and getting more and more complex. This is especially true for medicine with the growing emphasis on prevention of complex diseases and understanding their underlying causes. Medical doctors and researchers alike are increasingly confronted with problems that can no longer be solved by either themselves alone or even within single disciplines. Biomedicine represents the complimentary fusion of medicine, biology and technology. This multidisciplinary approach allows scientific findings from the laboratory to pass into clinical practice where they are translated into useful measures for prevention-oriented population medicine programs. At the same time, new insights from the clinic can be passed back to the laboratory where they can be translated into improved scientific theories and methods of analysis for the laboratory.
Such a "double-translational" exchange of information between establishments of research and clinical practice can iteratively improve all facets of population medicine: the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of common diseases. In response to this mounting complexity and the potentially significant benefits of translational biomedicine, the provincial government decreed in decision n. 4718 of 15. December 2008 to establish a biomedical research center in South Tyrol (Center for Biomedicine).
The South Tyrolean Health Service and EURAC, the partners in charge of establishing this Center, have already begun laying the foundations of this new multidisciplinary Center and have given the Institute of Genetic Medicine at EURAC the mandate to serve as both the basis for the new center as well as the nucleus for its continued growth. The biomedical center is funded by the Department of Educational Assistance, University and Research of the Autonomous Province of Bozen - South Tyrol. Areas that currently exist within the EURAC-Institute of Genetic Medicine (bioinformatics, cardiovascular medicine and neuromedicine) will be further expanded and developed for the new Center. In addition to these, new programs of translational research will be established with the goal of building a group dedicated to this area, in which a synergistic cooperation between individual research groups, hospitals, healthcare practices and the population will help to facilitate a double translation strategy.
The Center for Biomedicine is expected to grow out of its current location within EURAC and to be located eventually in the area of the hospital of Bolzano. At its basis the Center for Biomedicine has a new synergistic and creative model of collaboration based on trust, long term sustainability and win-win scenarios between all parties concerned: between clinicians and researchers, locally and internationally, and last but not least - the population participating in the research programs. Such a collaboration on all levels oriented on new leadership models, is also at the same time the basis for a paradigm change in the research world, which until now has been largely characterized by competition.
The joint mission of this new Center is to become the standard of excellence in biomedical research in the region, and through this, catalyze change leading to more research-based medicine in the healthcare system and improved population health. The overall goal being long term, sustainable research progress and improvement in population medicine.