Johns Hopkins and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Institute Join Forces

Under the agreement, the new initiative for "Innovations in Interventional Medicine” will bring together researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Whiting School of Engineering with biomedical engineers at Fraunhofer to develop new minimally invasive surgical tools. The initial phase of the collaboration will focus on three projects: the development of a computer-aided endoscopy tool that can help diagnose gastrointestinal disease; a laparoscopic surgery tool that will align pre-operative computerized tomography (CT) scans during surgery; and a new system that will be used to track endoscopes and surgical tools during medical procedures.

"This agreement provides a wonderful opportunity for researchers from the two institutions to work together to develop important new medical tools and move them out of the lab and into applications where they can help patients,” said Kristina M. Johnson, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at JHU. "Joining Johns Hopkins' expertise in basic research with Fraunhofer's skills in applied technology should result in a very productive international partnership.”

"Although this collaboration will initially focus on these three specific projects, we expect that the underlying technology developed can be applied to a broad spectrum of interventional and diagnostic medicine,” said Elliot McVeigh, director of biomedical engineering at JHU. "Perhaps more importantly, the goal of this joint effort is to develop a long-term working relationship with teams of engineers at Fraunhofer that will bring new medical technologies into practice more rapidly.”

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, comprised of more than 80 research units at 40 different locations throughout Germany, undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise, and is the largest organization for applied research in Europe. Of the EUR 1.3 billion annual research budget of the institute, more than EUR 1 billion is generated through contract research, derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects. The rest of the budget is contributed by the German federal and Länder [state] governments.


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