Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) have founded an ARC Innovation Center. ARC stands for Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate. The new center is intended to accelerate medical innovation and shorten the transfer of ideas into clinical practice.

The concept is based on a model of the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and is now being adopted by several clinics worldwide. The starting point is concrete challenges from everyday hospital life that employees from all areas bring to the table. The center collects and prioritizes these needs, develops solutions and tests them directly in care. It promotes collaboration with external partners, regulators and investors and secures access to data, test environments and clinical expertise.

Prof. Heyo Kroemer, Chairman of the Executive Board of Charité, emphasized the need to implement innovations more quickly and shorten long development cycles in view of demographic change. Interdisciplinary solutions should be medically sensible, technically feasible and quickly effective for patients. Prof. Christopher Baum, Chairman of the BIH Board of Directors, emphasised that new approaches in prevention, diagnosis and therapy should be adapted to risk and made available as quickly as possible.

The center integrates clinics, research, start-ups and industry in thematic Open Innovation Hubs. Among other things, a NeuroTech Open Innovation Hub is planned. Successful developments are intended to return revenues to research and thus create a sustainable cycle.

Funding is provided through matching funds: for every euro of private investment in joint projects, the state of Berlin provides an additional 50 percent of public funds. Support also comes from the Förderfonds Wissenschaft in Berlin and the Einstein Foundation.

The first activities will start in the first half of 2026. These include idea competitions to systematically identify challenges and an innovator program to support entrepreneurial ideas from employees and external teams.

Prof. Surjo Soekadar is responsible for the development as Chief Innovation Officer and works together with Managing Director Avner Shahal and an interdisciplinary team.

Editor: X-Press Journalistenbüro GbR

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