Building Bridges: Kraków Visits Sano

Representatives from the City of Kraków and the Invest in Krakow programme visited Sano to learn more about computational medicine.

This July, representatives of the City of Kraków (Urząd Miasta Krakowa) and its Invest in Krakow programme spent a morning at Sano to get to know our work. The group brought together several city departments: the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Centre for Supporting Investors and the Innovative Economy, the Unit for Cooperation with the Academic and Research Community, the Unit for Communication and Promotion, the Centre for Supporting Entrepreneurship, and the Department of Sustainable Development. They came to see what Sano does, what projects we are developing, and how the city can support our work.

The visit was a chance to show our research groups and some of the solutions taking shape here — from computer models of the human body to tools built for clinical training. Computational medicine, it turns out, is not just a concept for the future; it is already being developed in Kraków, in projects that connect research with real-world care. 

One technology drew particular interest: a coronary catheterisation simulator developed at Sano to support the training of future interventional cardiologists. It lets trainees practise a complex procedure in a realistic virtual environment before ever working with a real patient — and during the visit, our guests tried it for themselves. It is a fine example of how research can translate into practical solutions for healthcare.

The conversation ranged more widely, too — across research projects, publications, and computational models that reach from cardiovascular simulation and computational neuroscience to medical imaging and the study of the human gut microbiome. A key topic was the digital twin: a computer model of an individual patient that could help clinicians test and refine diagnosis and treatment before applying them in clinical practice. 

For the City of Kraków, the visit was part of an ongoing effort to strengthen ties with the local life science and business communities, to understand their needs, and to support a growing innovation ecosystem. We were glad to welcome our guests to Sano and to share how computational medicine is shaping the future of healthcare — and we hope this meeting is the beginning of further cooperation.