The MURAB project has the ambition to revolutionise the way cancer screening and muscle diseases are researched for patients and has the potential to save lives by early detection and treatment. The project intends to create a new paradigm in which, the precision of great medical imaging modalities like MRI and Ultrasound are combined with the precision of robotics in order to target the right place in the body. This will be achieved by identifying a target using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and then use a robot with an ultrasound (US) probe to match the images and navigate to the right location. This will be done thanks to a new innovative technique, which will be developed in the project and called Tissue Active Slam (TAS) which will use different techniques and modalities, like elastography, in order to cope with the deformation of the tissues. Such a procedure has the potential to drastically improve the clinical workflow and save lives by ensuring an exact targeting of (small) lesions, which are visible under MRI and not under US. Technologies developed within MURAB also have the potential to improve other clinical procedures. Clinically, two applications will be targeted and validated in the project: breast cancer diagnostics (MUW and ZGT) and muscle disease diagnostics (UMCN). Considering the potential for the market, industrial partners are involved with expertise in the delivery of safe robotics components and applications (KUKA), as well as with great knowledge and ambition in pushing innovation to the medical market (SIEMENS).

The sustainability of the European health care sector is challenged by 6 mega trends and as a consequence, the health care sector has for several years been undergoing major changes becoming increasingly digitalized, streamlined and focused on more staff and patient involvement and patient responsibility, in order to gain maximum quality in care, patient safety, efficiency, and at the same time stay economically sustainable.EUVECA is designed to support the needed innovation and development of the health care sector, by ensuring the provision of future oriented skills within the sector. This will be done through the creation of Regional Vocational Excellence Hubs in 7 European regions, which collaborate within a European Platform for Vocational Excellence in Health Care. The objective is to ensure coordination, adaption, innovation and upward convergence within regional health education eco systems, as well as promoting European (blended) mobility and inter regional learning and collaboration among health care professionals and students from the participating regions. EUVECA will show that by including a strategic and coordinated focus on VET in the work and collaboration within the regional health eco-systems, VET can contribute in a substantial way to move innovation forward within the European health care sector and ensure the sustainability of the sector on both a European and regional level. EUVECA will be implemented by a multi-disciplinary consortium of professionals, academics, local and regional health authorities, regional development agencies and social partners. Within 8 work packages, the partners and their regional stakeholders will co-create a governance model, as well as concrete education and training activities for the 7 regional hubs and the European platform will be developed, tested, fine-tuned and made sustainable for uptake of regional partnerships beyond the partnership.