(Vienna, 04-03-2024) Founded on 12 March 1365 as the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, MedUni Vienna was already a widely recognised authority on health issues in the Middle Ages. Since its spin-off from the Alma Mater Rudolphina in 2004, MedUni Vienna has not only developed into one of the largest medical universities in Europe, but also one of the world's most renowned institutions for cutting-edge research. Since then, around 16,000 graduates in human medicine and dentistry and researchers with a total of more than 73,000 scientific publications have helped write MedUni Vienna's success story. In the anniversary year 2024, the Medical University of Vienna Day on 12 March will mark the start of the celebrations.
International rankings reflect the success story: MedUni Vienna is consistently among the top 100 medical schools worldwide in university rankings. Vienna General Hospital and its university hospitals run jointly with MedUni Vienna were ranked 25th in the latest ranking of the world's best hospitals by US news magazine Newsweek. MedUni Vienna's doctors treat more than 60,000 inpatients per year and perform around 45,000 operations annually. In addition, the outpatient clinics and specialised outpatient departments of MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital are visited around 1.1 million times a year.
"The high international reputation we have regained after many decades is testament to the excellent performance of our staff over the past two decades," emphasises Markus Müller, Rector of the Medical University of Vienna since 2015. "The three pillars of our mission - research, teaching and patient care - contribute equally to the quality of our university. This ensures that MedUni Vienna will continue to successfully fulfil its social mission of creating, imparting and applying medical knowledge in the future. In our anniversary year, I would particularly like to thank my predecessor, the 'Founding Rector', Wolfgang Schütz, for his thoughtful direction in the early years of MedUni Vienna's independence. My sincere thanks go to our more than 6,300 employees for their impressive daily commitment to academic medicine and the well-being of the patients entrusted to us."
The course for future success has certainly been set at MedUni Vienna: With several major construction projects, MedUni Vienna is currently building over 90,000 square metres of new infrastructure for the medicine of the future. This is creating a modern framework for digital and personalised medicine. Whether at the Eric Kandel Institute - Center for Precision Medicine, the MedUni Mariannengasse Campus, the Center for Translational Medicine, the Centre for Technology Transfer, the expanded Anna Spiegel Research Building or the Ignaz Semmelweis Institute: in future, diagnostic and therapeutic methods as well as preventive measures will be developed here that are adapted to individual factors. This should make it possible in future to treat patients in an even more targeted and personalised way and to identify the causes of diseases at a molecular level.
On the occasion of the anniversary, the focus is not only on the future, but also on a dark chapter in the past: 12 March marks the anniversary of the founding of the university as well as the so-called "Anschluss" of Austria to Germany in 1938 with its devastating consequences for medicine as well. A commemoration ceremony in front of the "Memorial against Forgetting" on the grounds of MedUni Vienna is also a fixed item on the programme for the Medical University of Vienna Day this year. Details about the beginnings of MedUni Vienna as an autonomous institution will be revealed at the "Life Paths" event: Wolfgang Schütz, the first Rector of the independent MedUni Vienna until 2015, will talk about his own career and the development of the university.