Since 2012, personalised surgery has been used in the hospital's Maxillofacial Surgery, Neurosurgery and Traumatology departments for the treatment of complex pathologies such as tumours and deformities. Our implementation of the 3D-LAB project offers a comprehensive service under a common framework based on personalised surgery that allows for more precise and safer surgeries with more predictable results. This improves resource management and fosters research and innovation.

Personalised surgery techniques enable more efficient and safer surgeries, through the use of surgical devices and prostheses that are tailored for each patient. They provide geometrically complex structural reconstructions, using computer design and manufacturing techniques and CAD/CAM technology, which improve surgical precision and the quality of reconstructions while reducing the amount of time employed.

A personalised, comprehensive and digital service

This comprehensive personalised surgery service is offered through the Office for Surgical Planning and 3D Design (3D-LAB) at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital.

It is here that 3D prosthetics and implants are designed and the precision of the surgical technique used is evaluated. Only the 3D printing and production stage are outsourced.

To ensure an efficient, safe and high-quality implementation, the service combines new digital and 3-D printing technologies.

The next four years are expected to see this department treating some 660 patients, mostly for tumours, injuries, infections and congenital defects relating to the specialities of Maxillofacial Surgery and Neurosurgery as well as Traumatology and Orthopaedics, Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation, for patients requiring the amputation of a lower limb and subsequent distal load-bearing implants.

This project was launched in 2018 and will have been fully implemented by 2022.

Vall d’Hebron is hosting the European University Hospital Alliance (EUHA), made up of Europe's largest university hospitals working collaboratively to improve present and future patient outcomes.

The European University Hospital Alliance was founded in 2017, with a view to sharing experience in the areas of health, research and education. Each of the members is a leading university hospital in its country, with a capacity of more than 1,000 beds. They are national reference centres and, together, supply 100% of the existing European Reference Networks (ERNs). Moreover, all members of the Alliance have centres of excellence in research and are affiliated to a university.

The overall objective of its members is to play an active role in shaping the future of healthcare in the European Union, sharing the best practices in order to benefit patients and maximising efforts to promote high quality research.

The objectives of the European University Hospital Alliance are:

• To improve patient outcomes.
• To improve the opportunities and experiences of members of the Alliance in all areas.
• To strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, such as political leaders, the European Commission, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies and funding agencies.

The ten members of the European University Hospital Alliance are:

• Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien - Vienna, Austria
• Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris - Paris, France
• Charité - Berlin, Germany
• Erasmus Universität Medisch Centrum - Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron - Barcelona, ​​Spain
• Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset - Stockholm, Sweden
• King's Health Partners - London, United Kingdom
• Ospedale San Raffaele - Milan, Italy
• UZ Leuven - Leuven, Belgium
• Aarhus University Hospital - Aarhus, Denmark

Among all healthcare actors, university hospitals play an important role and are one of the main drivers and catalysts of innovation.

The Alliance sets out to improve communication between university hospitals; share good practices in the areas of patient care, innovation and other fields; and discuss issues in order to strengthen European healthcare systems. The Alliance also seeks to extend opportunities so that researchers, clinical professionals and other employees have the chance to acquire experience in other European university hospitals and develop professional networks.

Visit the Alliance website for more information: http://www.euhalliance.eu/

As a leading hospital complex, we maintain a commitment to patients based on transparency, active risk management and a rapid response should an incident arise. 

In this context, the Safety Commission is working towards a Safety Model centred around patients and professionals, guaranteeing that it will:

• Propose and prioritise strategies in the area of safety of patients and professionals
• Promote improvement actions related to the safety of patients and professionals
• Be responsible for monitoring indicators of the safety of patients and professionals and evaluating the results

The patient is just as important as the professional caring for them. For this reason, we join forces in risk management throughout the whole healthcare process to maximise benefits and minimise injury. With this intention, we supervise and adapt care teams to detect risks during handovers (shift changes, duty changes). We bring together care teams to share patient information and encourage notices as a method of risk and incident communication.

Besides this, in order to learn from our mistakes, we monitor the results of safety issues through a series of indicators (both for patients and professionals) and apply proposed improvements according to the results. Treating professionals fairly implies, among other things, providing training on an ongoing basis. We therefore have a training programme to provide an adequate response individually and collectively.

Finally, looking to the future, we are preparing ourselves for the implementation of telematic notification of complaints and incidents detected by patients. Their opinion is essential to improve the organisational structure and the scope of the measures in our security model.