The Executive Board of TU/e has decided to establish a new research institute focused on Transformative Health Technology. This decision represents an important step in strengthening TU/e's strategic position in the priority areas, as defined in the Institutional Plan 2026-2030 . The institute's ambition is to contribute to affordable, accessible, and sustainable solutions that improve health and well-being. The institute will officially launch in January 2027 and will bring together a broad group of researchers, directly or indirectly, from across most TU/e faculties.
Building impact
With the establishment of HEALTH, TU/e emphasizes its commitment to societal impact through technology. The institute will be a central hub that is stimulating strong synergy between TU/e's health-tech innovations and clinical needs through close collaboration with clinical, societal, and industrial partners.
The institute will continue to build on a strong community in health-related research and innovation and will consolidate core strengths into focused research themes.
The first theme, Future Health, focuses on reducing the burden of chronic inflammatory diseases, including cardiovascular, autoimmune, and rheumatic disorders. The institute will integrate fundamental research in regenerative medicine, imaging, predictive disease modelling, and lifestyle interventions with outside-in knowledge, concentrating on system solutions and technologies that shift the focus from managing these diseases to curing and preventing them.
The second theme, Future Cure & Care, focuses on how these innovations are assessed, adopted, and implemented in society, while addressing the health system burden due to chronic diseases. Because achieving impact and value creation in practice does not happen automatically, including integration into care processes and acceptance by healthcare professionals and patients, this is a dedicated theme within the institute. It builds on TU/e's strengths in clinical informatics and system integration, human-AI/robot collaboration, and decision support in simulated ecosystems and living labs, and will be further developed with TU/e's internal and external community.
Maarten Merkx, leading Dean of the Steering Committee Health, states: "Health-related research at TU/e covers the full breadth of health technology, from molecular and material-level innovations to societal implementation. TU/e has strong foundations in areas such as biomaterials, regenerative medicine, imaging, digital health, robotics and wearables, human-technology interaction, and technology adoption and work (re)design. By further strengthening transdisciplinary collaboration, with an important role for AI-driven approaches, we aim to improve diagnosis, prediction, and treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases and accelerate the translation of research outcomes into societal impact."
From analysis to institute design
In 2024-2025, an internal analysis mapped TU/e's strengths across health-related research, education, research support, ethics and regulation, and valorization. The analysis also highlighted TU/e's extensive collaboration network, including regional hospitals, academic medical centers, industry partners, SMEs, patient organizations, and regional stakeholders such as Brainport Development, Pivot Park, the Brabant Development Agency (BOM), and the Province of North Brabant.
Based on these findings, and in line with the Institutional Plan 2026-2030, the Executive Board proposed in January 2026 the establishment of a Research Institute to realize TU/e's ambitions in transformative health technology.
Health mission and next steps
Over the past months, researchers from the departments of Biomedical Engineering (lead: Carlijn Bouten), Electrical Engineering (Ruud van Sloun), Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences (Josette Gevers), and Mathematics & Computer Science (Jeanine Duistermaat) have worked closely with the Steering Committee Health to develop the foundation for the new research institute.
"There is a lot of excellent research at TU/e, and by bundling our forces we achieve real critical mass in health-related research, connecting to a broader community of hundreds of researchers working on health across the university. By strengthening system thinking and involving external partners, we can truly create value for society in an area that concerns us all", says TU/e-rector magnificus Silvia Lenaerts.
