Press Releases

July 21, 2021

Medical XR congress will take place with more than 60 world-leading experts and XR pioneers

Medical XR is about the use of digital technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) in medicine. The most important congress in this field is Shift Medical. This year, it will take place from September 23 - 25. More than 60 leading medical XR experts from the USA, Europe, England, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand will then present and discuss the latest developments on this innovative topic. Shift Medical is not the next Zoom Call, but a true virtual conference.

XR applications extend the reality of their users. Thus, they already offer numerous possibilities in medicine today, be that in the training of doctors, in diagnostics, in surgery or to support people with mental illnesses. As this is a young discipline, there are still important questions associated with their use which need to be discussed. Such as the question of benefit assessment, data protection or how pilot projects can effectively be transferred into clinical practice.

Interdisciplinary expert forum

Shift Medical 2021 is the platform to discuss these topics and questions with top-tier experts from different disciplines. In doing so, it puts the focus on diverse possibilities of Medical XR. „With Shift Medical, we are offering medicine, politics, companies and the interested public a platform to inform themselves about XR applications in medicine and to exchange ideas,“ explains Dr Lars Riedemann, University Hospital Heidelberg, who co-initiated the congress and as the scientific director he is responsible for the congress program. „Medical XR will play a major role in the medicine of the future. It is now time for the healthcare sector to embrace this topic and lay the foundations for a widespread application in clinical practice.“

Program impresses with international experts

This year, Shift Medical will start at 5pm CEST on Thursday 23/9/2021 and end at 10 pm CEST on Saturday 25/9/2021. During this time, numerous high level expert sessions will take place. The main topics will be augmented reality in the hospital of the future, in the training of surgeons, in the diagnosis and therapy of neurological diseases and in mental health. It will also address what it takes to efficiently develop Medical XR for broad healthcare and how Medical XR applications can be reimbursed as so-called „digital health applications“.

Real congress experience in the virtual world

Shift Medical took place for the first time in 2020 and was at the time, the world’s first avatar-based medical congress with the world's first virtual scientific poster exhibition under participation of the German Federal Ministry of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The patronage was held by Theresia Bauer, State Minister for Science, Research and Arts and Prof Dr Matthias Weidemüller, Prorector for Innovation and Transfer of the Heidelberg University.

Shift Medical was initially planned as an on-site conference and was then moved to the cyberspace due to the Corona pandemic. From the beginning, it was clear to the creators that they don’t want to make the next Zoom Call, but rather they wanted to transform the experience of an interdisciplinary congress into the digital world.

„We created our own virtual conference location for the Shift Medical,“ explains Sebastian Smieja from the agency burnthebunny, which is one of the initiators of the congress and is responsible for the concept and organisation of the Shift Medical. „Participants in the Medical XR Congress can be on site with their personal avatar and move freely in the virtual event rooms, take part in lectures and discussion rounds and randomly meet and exchange ideas with other participants. The feedback after Shift Medical 2020 was so positive that we will continue this concept independently of Corona in the future.“

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