Wir überwinden Grenzen

Visit on October 11 with a focus on sustainability / tour of paperless patient registration and a climate-friendly anesthesia unit

On Tuesday, October 11, 2022, Minister of Science Petra Olschowski visited the Medical Center - University of Freiburg. She learned about sustainability measures and energy savings at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg. These included cooling the building of the Interdisciplinary Tumor Center with Black Forest groundwater and a pilot project on green hydrogen. She also signed up for the paperless patient registration system as a test. Using a mobile anaesthesia machine, Olschowski was shown how climate-damaging anaesthetic gases can be avoided and recycled.

"The university hospitals have not only demonstrated the central role they play for society during the pandemic. They are also playing a pioneering role in the pressing climate crisis - and that is fundamentally important, because science is crucial in overcoming this huge challenge," said Science Minister Petra Olschowski.

"It is impressive how ambitiously the Medical Center - University of Freiburg is tackling climate protection and sustainability and how many ideas are already being implemented. Many impulses come from the employees - that is particularly remarkable, because we need many creative minds to achieve our goals and make rapid progress," said Olschowski.

The Medical Center - University of Freiburg is pursuing an ambitious concept and is also in talks with the other university hospitals in Baden-Württemberg. "Cooperation and exchange between the hospitals is the key. This shows how important networking in the Universitätsmedizin Baden-Württemberg e.V. association is," said Science Minister Petra Olschowski. The association was founded in early summer 2021 by the four university hospitals in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Ulm and the five Faculties of Medicine (including Mannheim).

"We are very pleased that Science Minister Olschowski has come to the Medical Center - University of Freiburg on one of her first visits after taking office. We see this as a clear sign of how important the future topics of health and sustainability are to her," says Prof. Dr. Frederik Wenz, Chief Medical Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Medical Center - University of Freiburg. "Thanks to the great commitment of our employees, we have ensured the highest level of care during the ongoing pandemic," says Wenz.

"Now it's increasingly about making hospitals fit in terms of sustainability and climate protection. Hospitals have an enormous impact here," says Wenz. In terms of energy, this means using new, digital systems to reduce primary energy requirements. Climate-damaging effects are to be reduced through sustainable procurement and a switch to recyclable products. However, emissions from anaesthetics can also be reduced: "By switching to alternative anaesthetic gases and anaesthetic gas collection systems, we have already been able to significantly reduce climate-damaging emissions in the operating theatre and play a pioneering role here in Baden-Württemberg. Green - Smart - Healthy: for me, this motto stands for the sustainable hospital of the future," said Wenz.

Image 1: Science Minister Petra Olschowski (center) tested the purely digital patient registration system at the Interdisciplinary Tumor Center of the Medical Center - University of Freiburg. The system was explained to her by Christa Hohner (left), Head of Business Unit 2 - Patients, and Dr. Julius Wehrle, physician and Head of the Data Integration Center at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg.

Image 2: Climate killer anesthetic gases: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Bürkle, Medical Director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, (left) explains to Science Minister Petra Olschowski (center) and Member of Parliament Nadine Saint-Cast how large quantities of climate-relevant anesthetic gases can be replaced or recycled in anesthesia.

Photo 3: Minister of Science Petra Olschowski (left), Freiburg's Lord Mayor Martin Horn, Prof. Dr. Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector of the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Frederik Wenz, Chief Medical Officer of the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, learn from Prof. Dr. Hartmut Bürkle, Medical Director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Medical Center of Freiburg, how climate-relevant anesthetic gases can be saved.

Image source: Medical Center - University of Freiburg