Ground-breaking ceremony at Ulm University Hospital: new patient and research building

Construction work on the new patient and research building at Ulm University Hospital began with a ground-breaking ceremony on June 28. The new building is being constructed due to the urgently required multi-year technical renovation of the ward block of the Clinic for Internal Medicine III at Ulm University Hospital. However, the building will also provide long-term space for the care of seriously ill cancer patients and for tumor research at the University Hospital and is therefore urgently needed.

"We are delighted that we have now been able to take the next step in the construction of the new patient and research building with the ground-breaking ceremony," says Professor Dr. Udo X. Kaisers, Chief Medical Director and Chairman of the Executive Board of Ulm University Hospital. "In addition to wards, the new building will also house the Early Clinical Trials Unit in the context of the National Center for Tumor Diseases as well as office and work rooms for scientists from the Faculty of Medicine," continued Kaisers. "The project is therefore an important step towards innovative patient care and oncology research in Ulm."

"The new building will bring together top-level oncological patient care and cancer research under one roof. This close exchange will benefit seriously ill patients through new, personalized therapeutic approaches," said Dr. Hans Reiter, Ministerial Director at the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, at the ground-breaking ceremony. "The state government supports this promising approach and has pledged special funding of 7.3 million euros for the premises of the National Center for Tumor Diseases. This is another strong signal for Ulm as a medical location."

The planned new building is a five-storey building. Internal Medicine III with the wards M4ab Oncology Section and M4cd Hematology will move into the new premises for the duration of the renovation. Two floors are intended for inpatient care, where patients with leukemia, malignant lymphomas and a wide variety of malignant cancers will be treated. The upper floor of the building will provide around 80 workstations for research and teaching, which will be used in particular to house the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT). The space for the planned NCT will be supplemented by a so-called Early Clinical Trials Unit (ECTU) on the first floor of the building. A further floor will be used for the necessary hospital logistics and, among other things, for the on-call service, sleeping and rest rooms.

"In the new building, we will primarily care for patients whose cancer is no longer manageable with standard treatment. They will be given the opportunity to be treated with innovative drugs as part of early clinical therapy studies. These therapies are only possible in special facilities at highly specialized clinics," says Professor Dr. Hartmut Döhner, Medical Director of the Department of Internal Medicine III at Ulm University Hospital.

"As part of the NCT Southwest, the building will not only play an important role in patient care, but also in the further development of oncological research at Ulm University Hospital," emphasizes Prof. Dr. Thomas Wirth, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Ulm University. "This brings us another step closer to our goal of developing innovative and individualized therapies for cancer patients."

The total investment in the new building amounts to around 32 million euros. It will be financed via the University Hospital's medium-term investment planning and the Faculty of Medicine. In addition, one-off special funding of 7.3 million euros has been promised by the state government for the establishment of the NCT areas.

To the press release on the website of Ulm University Hospital