Improving healthcare through innovation and collaboration
The TechMed Event is all about sharing the latest scientific insights and showcasing innovative technological solutions that improve healthcare for everyone. The program features inspiring keynotes, interaction, and sessions where research, education, business, and medical practice come together. This cross-pollination fuels innovation and helps us not only achieve breakthroughs but, more importantly, to make real impact: Beyond the Breakthrough. During the event, diverse disciplines unite to learn, share ideas, and form new collaborations. These connections create a powerful platform that contributes to enhancing the patient journey and accelerating med-tech developments that truly make a difference in practice.
The program consists of two main parts:
- Inspiration sessions
- Health Innovation Square
Inspiration Sessions
These sessions form the core of the event, offering a varied and inspiring program that includes two plenary keynotes and parallel sessions. The content of the parallel sessions is organised around three key themes: current healthcare challenges, innovative technologies, and in-depth explorations of challenging topics. Experts, innovators, and researchers lead interactive presentations and discussions that connect science, education, business, and medical practice. This creates a powerful platform for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and making a real impact in healthcare, both regionally and internationally.
Keynote talks
From challenge to change
Uniting for Impact: Advancing Women’s Health through Collaborative Innovation
The urgency to improve women’s health and advance gender-sensitive medicine is growing rapidly on both national and international levels. In 2025, the Dutch government aims to launch its first National Strategy for Women’s Health, recognizing that meaningful impact requires strong collaboration across leading institutions, disciplines, and diverse stakeholders in science, healthcare, and society.
This session explores various dimensions of such collaboration, showcasing the journey of Dutch medical and research centers, including Erasmus MC, UMC Groningen, and the University of Twente’s TechMed Centre, joining forces to drive innovation in women’s health. Within the TechMed Centre, a multidisciplinary group of researchers is dedicated to developing and adapting technologies that address critical knowledge gaps and unmet needs throughout women’s life stages, contributing to initiatives like the first Women’s Health minor in the Netherlands and expanding networks for innovation and knowledge exchange.
Beyond the scientific and technological advances, the session highlights efforts to bridge science and society, integrating patient perspectives, promoting diversity-centered design, and fostering citizen-driven research, to ensure innovations are relevant, inclusive, and have lasting impact. It addresses the challenges and opportunities in uniting different worlds to create sustainable change in women’s health.
Translating cardiovascular tech: from lab discovery to patient-centered solutions
Cardiovascular disease demands innovation, but how do we turn cutting-edge discoveries into solutions that truly reach patients? This session explores the translation of cardiovascular technology from lab to life, through different perspectives: pioneering start-ups, clinical application, fundamental research, and integrated care. Featuring speakers we will dive into practical examples of how cardiovascular health technology can be advanced through strategic collaboration and real-world testing.
We will explore how engineered heart models and computational simulations are transforming drug discovery, disease understanding, and early diagnostics. From the entrepreneurial side, we’ll hear what it takes to grow university-based ventures into scalable companies. Meanwhile, translational researchers and clinical experts will reflect on how innovation can be embedded in care pathways and education, ensuring alignment with both patient needs and healthcare system priorities. This session invites discussion on a fundamental challenge: how can we design cardiovascular technologies that are not only innovative, but implementable and truly impactful for patient lives?
In joint effort: where diverse perspectives meet in musculoskeletal health
True innovation in healthcare doesn’t come from a single angle, it emerges from collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and experiences. In this session, In Joint Effort, we explore how impactful advancements in musculoskeletal health emerge when we bring together multiple perspectives.
Through three examples, we highlight projects that span from the lab to the clinic, incorporating insights from technical and social scientists, ethicists, legal experts, and clinicians. Together with a patient, we reflect on these innovations: what impact do they have on people’s lives, and how can patients be meaningfully involved from the earliest stages?
These examples illustrate how collaboration, between universities, universities of applied sciences, hospitals, and funding organisations, can drive both scientific progress and real-world patient benefit. By showcasing these interconnected perspectives, we aim to demonstrate that it takes more than innovation, it takes alignment, to truly move the field forward.
From idea to reality
AI in Action: From Lab Simulation to Patient Lives
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the future of healthcare, but how do we bridge the gap between promising “lab simulations” and real-world patient impact? This session explores the critical transition from simulation to reality, through three key perspectives: the voice of the patient, the innovative drive of start-ups, and the practical role of data-driven engineering. Featuring speakers from AllAI, the Dutch patients association, and Demcon Data Driven Solutions, we will dive into real-world challenges and solutions that emerge when AI moves beyond research and into clinical practice.
We will discuss how AI technologies can truly align with patient needs, and why trust, transparency, and human-centered design are essential for adoption. From the start-up perspective, we’ll explore what it takes to scale from prototype to practice, and how to overcome hurdles like validation, integration, and regulatory approval. Meanwhile, applied research and industry leaders reflect on translating innovation into safe, ethical, and effective systems that work in complex healthcare environments. This session encourages open dialogue and invites the audience to reflect on a central question: What does it really take to make AI matter in the everyday lives of patients?
Imaging Innovations: Seeing the Future of Healthcare
More information announced soon
Bioengineering labs unlocked BioEngineering Labs Unlocked: Accelerating Research and Innovation
How can cutting-edge infrastructure contribute to a thriving ecosystem of MedTech researchers, companies, and innovators? In this session, we explore how the BioEngineering Labs managed by the TechMed Centre of the University of Twente are unlocking new possibilities for biomedical research and development. These labs serve as a collaborative playground where science and technology converge to accelerate the journey from idea to impact.
Through a series of perspectives, we’ll highlight how the labs help grow partnerships, support translational research, and continuously evolve to meet the needs of a rapidly changing MedTech landscape. Whether through interdisciplinary collaboration, integration into national networks, or co-creation with industry, BioEngineering Labs are shaping the future of health innovation - one breakthrough at a time.
Deep dive sessions
Unlocking Dual Impact: Where Defence and Healthcare Meet
In an era marked by global uncertainty, from pandemics and geopolitical tensions to natural disasters and growing pressure on healthcare systems, the boundaries between defence and healthcare are becoming increasingly porous. Both domains are being challenged to act faster, smarter, and more collaboratively. And in that shared urgency lies enormous potential.
This session explores how defence and healthcare can strengthen one another through shared technologies, strategies, and lessons learned. Where defence offers robustness, speed, and operational clarity, healthcare brings adaptability, data, and deep human context. Together, they can unlock smarter solutions for trauma care, crisis response, medical logistics, and more.
We bring perspectives from national applied science (TNO), military medicine, logistics, and a health-defence start-up, each offering real-world insights into how cross-sector collaboration leads to results that matter in the field and at the bedside. This session is not just about sharing solutions, it’s about seizing the opportunity of convergence. Because in times like these, collaboration between defence and healthcare isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity.
Crossborder collaboration More information announced soon.
Accelerating Healthcare Innovation From Idea to Impact: Accelerating Healthcare Innovation
Transforming great ideas into real-world healthcare solutions is rarely a straight line. It requires more than scientific excellence or clinical insight, it calls for smart collaboration, early validation, and the ability to navigate complex care systems. This session explores what it truly takes to accelerate innovation in healthcare. From identifying unmet needs and shaping relevant solutions, to testing, scaling, and ultimately implementing innovations that matter, we examine how the journey from concept to impact can be made faster, safer, and more patient-focused.
Through real-world examples and key lessons learned, we highlight how healthcare systems, researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors can work together more effectively. We’ll also discuss the unique role of clinical environments as testbeds for innovation, and the growing importance of agile partnerships across science, technology, and care. Whether you're a clinician, innovator, policymaker, or founder, this session offers insights into how to break through the barriers, and build a stronger, more connected innovation pathway for the future of health.
Health Innovation Square
The Health Innovation Square is the vibrant heart of the event, serving as an interactive exhibition space where visitors come together to connect, network, and engage in meaningful conversations in an informal setting. Organisations showcase their latest innovations and research outcomes through live demos, prototypes, posters, and meet-the-expert moments. This dynamic environment offers a unique opportunity to explore cutting-edge MedTech solutions while fostering collaboration