COLLABORATION. For the eighth year in a row, Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital hosted our Research Day. This year’s event highlighted several cross-disciplinary centers of expertise and research.
Research Day is a reminder of how closely healthcare and academia collaborate and the importance of working together to develop healthcare in the future.
Many cross-disciplinary centers of expertise and research
Dean Agneta Holmäng and Hospital Director Ann-Marie Wennberg Larkö started off the day by welcoming the attendees, both those present physically and online:
“It is really important to focus on research because this is part of our core activities. And we must never forget this. Today’s research is tomorrow’s routine healthcare,” said Ann-Marie Wennberg Larkö.
“We are very good at building centers of expertise and research aimed at stimulating multidisciplinary research. We have 15 such centers at Sahlgrenska University Hospital and 17 at Sahlgrenska Academy, and many of them also reach across our organizational boundaries,” said Agneta Holmäng.
Several centers of expertise and research
The theme of the 2023 Research Day was “Putting research in the center.”
“We wanted to highlight centers that have not yet been highlighted as part of the themes that Research Day has had over the years. The centers we have selected have various time spans. Some are established, and others are relatively new,” said Peter Gjertsson, who has convened the team that developed the program for this year’s Research Day.
Five centers were featured during the day. First up was the Gothenburg Emergency Research Group (GEMREG), which brings together research on the entire emergency care chain. This relatively new center is conducting around 20 different projects. Several of them involve the introduction of a new triage system in the emergency room called WEST, including the doctoral thesis project of emergency physician and doctoral student Samah Habbouche. During her presentation, she described how the new triage system can reduce over-prioritization so that fewer patients are categorized as high priority without entailing medical risks, and allowing the orange triage category to regain its signal value.
Centers presented in addition to GEMREG included the Center for Research and Education on Risk, Abuse and Addiction (CERA), the Center for Antibiotic Research (CARe), the Epilepsy Center (EpiCARE), and the Cystic Fibrosis Center.
The teaching team in infectious medicine, represented by Marie Studahl, Josefina Robertsson, and Frida Rydberg, received Sahlgrenska Academy’s teaching award. They were recognized for the development of the digital platform “The Virtual Hospital.”
Core Facilities exhibited
Research Day also highlighted the research support organization. Gothia Forum, Akademistatistik, and Biobank West gave short presentations, and in the lobby visitors could mingle with representatives from several resources and platforms that support research.
Core Facilities, one of the exhibitors in the lobby, joined SciLifeLab Gothenburg to highlight the research support available locally and also national platforms and networks.
“Research Day is a good opportunity for us to showcase our services and support to researchers and employees at Sahlgrenska Academy, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, and the region. In addition, the interesting program provided an opportunity to listen to exciting talks,” says Maria Smedh, coordinator of SciLifeLab Gothenburg.
The 2023 Research Day team consisted of Peter Gjertsson, Per-Anders Jansson, Ola Rolfson, Helle Wijk, and Gabriel Bake (administrative support).
BY: ELIN LINDSTRÖM / CHARBEL SADER
PHOTO: CHARBEL SADER
