Connecting external policy

Cooperation with other institutions

UZA

The UZA is a crucial partner for the UAntwerpen. In recent years, the ties between the two institutions have been strengthened again and we want to continue working on a transparent relationship with great mutual trust. Maintaining a close relationship between hospital and university administration is of great importance in this respect and, in addition to easy direct access, we provide a permanent liaison person who has the relevant knowledge along both sides.
UAntwerp remains in favour of one large Antwerp health system, in which the UZA occupies its special place with regard to research, tertiary care and the training of doctor-specialists, in good relations with the other major hospitals.
We are fully committed to the implementation of the recent new management agreement between UZA and UAntwerpen including:

• Close cooperation for competence-based medical education.
• Preferential partnership for research and valorisation; where UZA acts as a receiving institution for patient-related applied research, UAntwerp does so for fundamental research and non-patient-related applied research.
• RIVA supports all projects in which UAntwerpen is involved.
• ZAP with a combined full-time UZA-UAntwerp appointment with at least 10% ZAP appointment at UAntwerpen, are equated with full-time ZAP members at UAntwerpen for internal project funding.
• With the merger of ZNA and GZA, we will soon have one of the largest hospital networks in Europe in our backyard. UAntwerp, as a somewhat off to the side player, can facilitate the connection between UZA and the other hospitals.
• We believe in the potential of Antwerp Health Harbour as a health innovation cluster. The collaboration between university, UZA, the other hospital networks, primary care and the City will provide powerful and unique data and applications.

AUHA, ITG and other Antwerp institutions

UAntwerpen continues to assume its responsibility as the largest partner within AUHA. We are committed to cooperating on common themes such as student facilities while respecting the individuality and autonomy of the various institutions. Already existing AUHA actions such as Study Chat, STUVANT but also TakeOffAntwerp we wish to strengthen, not only by working together more intensively but by looking where resources can be found or created.

With ITG, we maintain both formal and very many informal ties. This manifests itself in participation of ITG professors in our teaching with part-time UAntwerpen, joint projects project funds, PhD students. In the future, we foresee other opportunities such as shared use of infrastructure. Also in the cooperation with other institutions such as the KMDA research centre, geographical proximity provides a win-win for scientific research.

Other Flemish universities

We continue to invest in our special ties with VUB and UGent, with especially the NOVA Academy for lifelong learning as a visible collaboration. Through the establishment of the Hannah Arendt Institute, UAntwerpen has a presence in the city of Mechelen, together with VUB and City of Mechelen. Equally, we continue to work on sustainable connection with the other Flemish universities. First and foremost, it is important that we speak to the government with one voice when it comes to the funding and rationalisation of university education. Here, the specific interests of all universities must have their place during the discussions and we adopt a constructive attitude to this, and are then loyal to the agreed compromise. Here too, we opt for a unifying discourse to learn from each other and seek shared solutions to the universities' common responsibilities.