“The wonderful thing about our investment in capital projects is that these health and research facilities create more and more value over time. The contribution they make not only has a positive impact on local or regional populations, but in some cases plays a key role in developing the prevention, or treatment, of certain diseases worldwide. The Evelyn Cambridge Surgical Training Centre is a great example of this,” explains Rebecca Wood, Director of the Evelyn Trust.
Over the last eight years, the Trust has invested £750,000 in the Melbourn-based Centre. Dr Arun Gupta, who leads the Centre’s team and is Director of Postgraduate Education for Cambridge University Hospitals, is clear that, without the support of the Evelyn Trust, the Centre could never have developed to its current level of success and recognition.
“When the Centre opened in 2013, it offered state-of-the-art training for surgeons and other healthcare professionals. Since that time, around 6,500 students and researchers have developed their skills in our facility and demand continues to grow. It would have been impossible to fund our specialist equipment, which needs to be constantly updated, without the help of the Evelyn Trust.”
With funding from Health Education England, the east of England’s trainee surgeons are put through their paces at the Centre using cadavers. In recent years, due to its clinical and scientific expertise, the Centre has also become a leader in training using the very latest medical simulation and robotic surgery.
Alongside surgical training, the Centre has been in demand from the R&D sector, helping researchers to test prototype medical devices and training doctors and technicians in the use of robots. Long term collaborations have evolved between the NHS, academia and industry, including partners such as Cambridge Medical Robotics and Olympus Medical Systems.
Fast forward to 2023 and the Centre plans to relocate and begin a new future as the Cambridge Digital Health and Surgical Training Centre – a revised name to acknowledge the growing role that digital ‘extended reality’ systems now play in the training of clinicians.
“We have been working on a project to secure our new facility, with the new location being confirmed as the Quorum, Barnwell Road. This is partly because the lease at our Melbourn site is due to expire, but also because we’ve outgrown our current facility and it needs significant investment to upgrade it. Relocation will allow the integration of mixed reality and immersive technologies to make the new Centre a truly next generation training and research facility,” says Dr Arun Gupta, Director.
Find out more about the fascinating work of the Evelyn Cambridge Surgical Training Centre at www.cambridgesurgicaltraining.co.uk