HOCHSCHULE FURTWANGEN

Their core work

Hochschule Furtwangen (HFU) is a German university of applied sciences that bridges digital technologies with healthcare and medical training applications. Their recent H2020 work focuses on building digital patient models for personalized intensive care medicine and developing mixed-reality training systems for emergency first responders. They bring applied engineering competence — particularly in simulation, wearable sensors, and physiological modelling — to interdisciplinary health and security consortia.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

HFU's H2020 trajectory shows a clear pivot. Their earliest project (GEDII, 2015-2018) dealt with gender diversity in research — a social sciences topic with no technical keywords. From 2020 onward, they shifted entirely toward applied digital health: physiological modelling, personalized medicine, and mixed-reality training with wearable technologies. This represents a move from soft-topic participation to technically grounded contributions in medical simulation and digital health.

HFU is building capability at the intersection of digital simulation, wearable tech, and healthcare — expect them to seek projects combining XR, physiological modelling, and clinical decision support.

How they like to work

HFU has participated exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, suggesting they contribute specialized technical expertise rather than leading project management. Across just 3 projects they have worked with 34 unique partners in 12 countries, indicating they join broad, international consortia rather than tight recurring partnerships. This makes them an adaptable partner comfortable working in large, diverse teams.

Despite only 3 projects, HFU has built connections with 34 partners across 12 countries, reflecting participation in large European consortia. Their network spans broadly across the EU without a narrow geographic concentration.

What sets them apart

As a German university of applied sciences (Fachhochschule), HFU brings a practical, engineering-oriented approach that distinguishes it from large research universities. Their combination of physiological modelling expertise with mixed-reality and wearable tech positions them uniquely for projects needing hands-on prototyping of digital health tools. For consortium builders, they offer implementation-ready technical contributions without the overhead of a large research institution.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DCPM
  Largest funded project (EUR 211,600) developing digital patient clones for intensive care — represents HFU's core emerging competence in computational medicine.
• MED1stMR
  Bridges health and security sectors by applying mixed-reality and haptic wearables to first responder training — an unusual and high-demand application area.