LAUSR

Healthcare is rapidly changing and gaining complexity. In the past decades, technological development has led to major progress in the field of healthcare, medical scientific research and medical education. The result of the development in medical technology is an impressive increase of diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities and extensive specialisation of healthcare professionals. Technology is increasing not only in quantity, but also in complexity. High-quality technology demands knowledge and insight to cope with this technology and to implement it in the most optimal and safe way. Healthcare today calls for professionals with combined scientific, medical, engineering and informatics background, and demands a multidisciplinary approach. As medical technology was emerging fast, a Technical Medicine educational programme has been designed and has started in 2003 at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, including the opportunity to follow a subsequent clinical fellowship, and was the first of its kind in the world (https:// www. nvvtg. nl/ techn ischegenee skunde/, https:// www. nvvtg. nl/ fello wships/). Technical Medicine has now gained recognition as a new, full-fledged discipline in Dutch healthcare. This was followed by other Universities, such as the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands, and a few educational programmes outside the Netherlands; however, these are not fully comparable. The length of the scholarship in the Netherlands is a bachelor programme of 3 years followed by a master of 3 years, which includes 2 years of clinical internships, combining patient care and research. Main educational programme lines in the Netherlands are (molecular) imaging and intervention, and sensing and stimulation. Its acknowledgement was accelerated by the fact that the knowledge domain belonging to this new group of professionals has been officially recognised by the Dutch law. The novelty of this profession lies in the fact that graduates need to register in the Dutch BIG-registry (e.g. legal public registration for professions in individual healthcare), and are then qualified to independently perform certain reserved clinical procedures in the Netherlands. These clinical competencies are as follows (https:// www. nvvtg. nl/ techn ischegenee skunde/):