These are exciting times for Dave Koolbergen, congenital cardiac surgeon at AMC. With his company Haermonics he hopes to bring a new technology to market for postoperative pericardial flushing. It was developed upon his observation that after heart surgery often the removal of accumulated blood and clots can be achieved by flushing the pericardial space with a warm saline solution. Koolbergen’s continuous postoperative pericardial flushing (CPPF) can save lives by achieving a strong reduction in postoperative bleeding and bleeding related complications, such as a life-
threathening acute cardiac tamponade.
Koolbergen is a veteran innovator – the CPPF method is not his first invention. In this case he decided, with helpful guidance by the IXA business developers, to bring his idea to market with Haermonics as a spin-off company. “Not only was this a business decision, for me it’s important to keep control of the realisation of my idea. I have not really considered finding a company to assist in further development.” He does admit that being Chief Medical Officer for Haermonics is quite a new experience. “It’s a lot of work which now and then interferes with my duties as cardiac surgeon. On the other hand there’s also lots of synergy, in running clinical trials and heading research projects.”
Developing high-quality entrepreneurship education – Amsterdam’s higher education institutions have been working closely together on this since 2008. This was done in the IXAnext valorisation program between 2016 and 2021. We proudly present the main results of the IXAnext program: Ten Amsterdam entrepreneurship cases; Post experience education for alumni; Blended learning modules; A mentoring platform […]
When Ard den Heeten, professor of Radiology teamed up with his AMC colleague Kees Grimbergen, professor of Medical Technology, a new approach to mammography was born. It has been developed upon Grimbergen’s observation of a serious flaw in the current mammogram procedure: the establishment of a standard force of the so-called “paddle” compressing the breasts. […]
Iwan Dobbe is bringing the benefits of modern 3D image analysis and printing technology to the clinic. As a researcher at the Biomedical Engineering and Physics department at AMC he devised a method for the design and production of a patient-specific plate for the alignment of bone segments. It requires a single CT scan, preoperative […]