Flemish Minister Diependaele visits Orsi Academy

Flemish Minister Diependaele visits Orsi Academy

On Wednesday, July 12, Flemish Minister Matthias Diependaele paid a visit to our training centre. "Flanders is at the top in terms of medical innovation & technology. Surgeons and medtech companies from all over the world are coming here for training," Minister Diependaele stressed.

Our CEO Prof. Dr. Alex Mottrie believes everything is evolving rapidly: "Surgery will change more in the next ten years than it has in the past hundred years. In addition to robotics, other innovations (such as artificial intelligence and image-guided surgery) will become more and more important."

Since 2010, Orsi Academy has grown into a world-renowned center of expertise for robotic surgery and minimally invasive surgery. Every year, more than 3500 surgeons, from home and abroad, learn to perform procedures using high-tech equipment. Future surgeons can practice in the lab, just as pilots learn to fly in a flight simulator. Surgeons should be trained like pilots. They spend hundreds of hours on a simulator before flying a real plane.

Prof. Dr. Mottrie emphasizes that is has been scientifically proven that robot-assisted surgeries are much more accurate and therefore lead to fewer complications. "As a result, the patient has to stay in the hospital for a shorter period of time and the risk of a complication later on is also much lower."

"It is impressive to see how research, innovation and academia come together at Orsi. We are putting Flanders on the map as an innovative centre," Minister Diependaele concluded.