VAMED to Open New Research Location in Lower Austria

• The Institute for Gender Medicine in Gars am Kamp ensures further upgrading of Lower Austria as a location for medical practice and research
• Gender physician and Scientist of the Year, Prof. Dr. Kautzky-Willer, takes over medical management
• VAMED translates research into innovative healthcare offers for patients

 Lower Austria gets another research location for medicine. In Gars am Kamp, the internationally leading healthcare provider VAMED is opening the Institute for Gender Medicine in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna). Thus, in addition to the la pura women’s health resort kamptal and the Rehabilitation Clinic Gars am Kamp, another trendsetting healthcare facility is being built in the traditional Lower Austrian health resort. 

Men and women have different needs – this concerns the Interpretation of disease symptoms as well as the effects of medications or therapeutic measures. The Gender Medicine Unit at the MedUni Vienna and the 650 physicians of the VAMED International Medical Board have therefore been working on new, individual medical approaches for quite some time. The institute in Gars am Kamp will open up new perspectives in applied gender-based research in the future. 

Mag.^a Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Provincial Governor of Lower Austria:
“I am delighted that VAMED has selected a location in Lower Austria for research in this trendsetting field. This innovative center is not only a pioneering project in medical research and healthcare. It will also be a flagship project in the research landscape in Lower Austria.” 

Dr. Ernst Wastler, CEO of VAMED AG, said, “With its healthcare and rehabilitation facilities, VAMED is an innovation leader in individualized medicine. With our extensive network of more than 600 VAMED-operated healthcare facilities worldwide, we offer a unique environment for applied leading-edge medical research to the benefit and for the wellbeing of our patients. At the same time, our healthcare facilities alone annually contribute around 150 million euros of added value to Lower Austria and secure about 1,000 jobs.”         

First research topic: Stress and metabolism The new institute will begin its work in the autumn of this very year. The medical director will be the leading Austrian gender physician Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Alexandra Kautzky-Willer from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria’s current Scientist of the Year, member of the VAMED International Medical Board and scientific advisor of the la pura women’s health resort kamptal. In addition to ongoing research topics in rehabilitation, from autumn on, the institute will also address the important field of prevention. To this end, the interaction of stress and metabolism will be investigated in several parallel studies with respect to gender-specific factors.  

Kautzky-Willer: “Each patient, whether male or female, has individual needs and therefore needs a tailor-made therapy concept. We already know that in obesity and many chronic diseases stress reduction can lead to improvement and thus to higher quality of life. From the studies, we hope to gain even more detailed insights into the differing mechanisms of action in women and men.”  VAMED has already been constantly incorporating insights from individualized medicine into its prevention, rehabilitation and nursing services.

The most recent example of this is a new, woman-specific stress management program that VAMED has implemented at the la pura women’s health resort kamptal. At the VAMED Rehabilitation Clinics Gmundnerberg and Montafon, likewise different therapies for women and men are being researched.  

The findings from the new Institute for Gender Medicine will contribute to the expansion of the healthcare offer in all VAMED health facilities. Starting from the research location in Gars, through lectures, international congresses and training people from all medical professions are to be sensitized to new individual medical insights. In addition, students and postgraduates are given the opportunity to conduct research at the Institute for Gender Medicine.  

VAMED in Lower Austria In Lower Austria, alongside the la pura women’s health resort kamptal and the Psychosomatic Center Waldviertel with the facilities in Gars am Kamp and Eggenburg, VAMED also operates Therme Laa – Hotel & Silent Spa, the largest health tourism facility in the country. VAMED and Niederösterreichische Landeskliniken Holding are long-standing competence partners in the field of acute medical care.