Competence and expertise
Our goal: We want to make better and more effective use of Bochum's great potential for development as a health care destination. This is the mission of our expert advisory board, made up of one representative each from business, science, and health care. They advise and support the Health Campus Bochum agency intensively and with specific input: The experts establish connections, build networks, and initiate projects and financing.
Members of the Expert Advisory Board:
Birgit Fischer
Staatsministerin a.D.
Birgit Fischer supports and advises health projects as a health consultant and is Chair of the University Council of Ruhr University Bochum. She was Chief Executive of the vfa (Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies) until 2011, Chairwoman of the Board of BARMER GEK (2010-2011), and Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of BARMER (2007-2009), Minister for Health, Social Affairs, Women, and Family in NRW (1998-2005), Parliamentary Director of the SPD parliamentary group in NRW (1991-1998) and, after studying education, worked for 13 years in continuing education and as an equal opportunities commissioner before becoming a member of the NRW state parliament (1990-2007).
Jörg Holstein
Jörg Holstein is a Bochum-based entrepreneur in the health industry. His entrepreneurial activities are bundled in Meerkat on the Bochum Health Campus. As founder and managing director from 2000 to 2021, he developed VISUS Health IT into a leading company in health IT. Since then, VISUS, based on the Bochum Health Campus, has been part of the CompuGroup Medical group and continues to grow internationally. The West German Teleradiology Association with its marketplace for AI applications and DIMATE GmbH emerged from VISUS as independent companies, which Jörg Holstein continues to support strategically. Jörg Holstein is also involved as a board member in MedEcon Ruhr e. V., the network of the healthcare industry in the Ruhr.
Prof. Dr. med. Horst Christian Vollmar, MPH
Horst Christian Vollmar has headed the Department of General Medicine (AM RUB) at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) since 2018. He first studied medicine, later public health, passed his specialist examination as a general practitioner in 2001, and obtained additional qualifications in medical information technology, medical quality management, and sports medicine. After professional positions at the University of Witten/Herdecke, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe, the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in the Helmholtz Association at the Witten site, and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), he took over the professorship for health services research at the University Hospital Jena (UKJ) in 2016, which he held until 2018. He works on many committees; he currently chairs the Digital Health Working Group and is on the board of the German Network for Health Services Research (DNVF).
Detlef Friedrich
Detlef Friedrich, graduate psychologist and entrepreneur in Bochum for over 33 years, started contec GmbH as a spin-off from Ruhr University with software development for social enterprises (until 1998) and then developed it further into a management and personnel consultancy for the health and social economy. Friedrich has played a major role in the development of the Health Campus agency and is a member of the IHK's plenary assembly as a representative of the health industry. Today, contec is based at the IZG (Innovation Centre for the Health Industry) on the Bochum Health Campus and at four other locations in Germany. The IZG also houses the research institute IEGUS (Institute for European Health and Social Economy) founded in Berlin in 2007, of which Friedrich has been the managing director since its foundation. As a passionate networker, Friedrich also supports the establishment and development of innovative companies in Bochum, for example in the case of Cyberdyne Care Robotics GmbH and the founding of MEDECON Telemedizin GmbH.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Ostendorf
Andreas Ostendorf has been Professor and Chair of Laser Application Technology in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) since 2008. In this function, he deals with research questions on precision processing with lasers for biomedical applications and metrological tasks for the detection of biomolecules, among other things. In the meantime, he was Dean of the Faculty (2013-2014) and from 2014-2021 Prorector for research, transfer, and young academics at the RUB. In this context, he successfully established a start-up culture at RUB and tied the content of the health campus more closely to the university.