Kalkara/Malta, March 16, 2020. University Professor Dr. Andreas Hoeft, Director of the Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Operative Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), will become the founding dean of the medical faculty of EDU, Europe’s first digital Institution of Higher Education with a degree in human medicine, on August 1, 2020.
Andreas Hoeft has been Director of the Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Operative Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) since 1995. The anaesthesist and physiologist will retire there at the end of July this year to take on the responsible task at Europe’s most innovative medical faculty for human medicine. Hoeft is one of the founders of EDU and speaker of the founding faculty.
“It is a great pleasure for me to have won over such a top-class physician and teacher as Andreas Hoeft, who has been involved with EDU since the very beginning, for the task of founding dean,” says Dr. Jürgen Laartz, founding director of EDU. “We share the vision of making innovative training concepts available for the next generation of medical education throughout Europe.”
Professor Dr. Andreas Hoeft: “I am excited about the challenge and I am proud of what we have already achieved at EDU. A high quality medical education should be open to everyone in the world who has the passion and individual skills to study medicine. With our approach to studying human medicine, we finally combine a highly respected profession with a long history, with the didactic knowledge and technological possibilities of today. We provide a viable solution to the shortage of doctors in this country and worldwide — and with us, talented men and women can study human medicine anywhere in the world.”
About Professor Dr. Hoeft’s professional life: Professor Dr. Andreas Hoeft was born in Bielefeld/Germany in 1954. From 1974 to 1979 he studied human medicine at the University of Münster. In 1980 he received his doctorate (magna cum laude) from the Radiology Clinic of the University of Münster. In 1986 he habilitated at the University of Göttingen in the field of physiology. After a stint at the University of Texas, Hoeft habilitated in anaesthesiology in 1992, again in Göttingen. He accepted the call to Bonn in 1995. From 1996 to 2016, had been Vice Medical Director (board member) of the University Hospital of Bonn.
Hoeft is a reviewer for renowned journals such as Anesthesiology, European Journal of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, holds several patents and has authored over 600 publications in internationally peer-reviewed journals. Hoeft was a member of various DFG review boards from 2004 to 2010 and has been active in various roles in the European Society of Anaesthesiology since 2002, currently as a member of the board and chair of the Scientific Committee.
EDU is a European Institution of Higher Education. EDU is operated by Digital Education Holdings Limited (DEH) based in Kalkara, Malta. As the first educational institution of its kind in Europe, EDU offers an interactive, digital study of human medicine. The National Commission for Further and Higher Education (superseded by the Malta Further and Higher Education Authority as of January 2021) of the Republic of Malta has granted accreditation for the Degree in Medicine. From the first trimester, students at EDU learn the scientific and practical foundations of human medicine in a digital campus and in practice at teaching hospitals.
EDU supports the Digital Education Action Plan of the European Commission and the United Nations in realizing the third and fourth goal for sustainable development (“Good Health and Well- Being”, “Education for All”).