More than four hundred years after Rembrandt visited an anatomy lesson and created his world-famous painting, we founded the Amsterdam Skills Centre for Health Sciences only a few miles from where the operational theatre of the famous Dr. Nicolaes Tulp once was.

History and state of the art technology come together here to create the surgical teams of the future.

On average, it takes more than 30,000 hours of learning and practicing on the job before one is able to operate independently and lead a surgical team. Almost four times more than is required to train a helicopter pilot, or three times the time it took Jimi Hendrix to become the world’s best guitar player.

At the ASC, we believe ‘training on the job’ programs need to be replaced with high-quality, time-efficient and low-cost ‘training off the job’ programs. The rapid progress of digital resources varying from e-books to virtual reality training with haptic feedback, feasibility of telementoring, the advances of artificial intelligence allowing decision support and image guidance, and the availability of novel techniques to preserve human tissue provide the components to build a new training-off-the-job curriculum, a ‘New Way of Training’, which will enable the novice to master abilities and the expert to maintain abilities through a lifelong learning cycle.

Building a New Way of Training can only be done by working as a team across disciplines, across universities, across borders. To accomplish this, the Amsterdam Skills Centre provides state-of-the-art operating theatres with 23 operating stations providing training of complex procedures on preserved human tissue, surgical robots, training on virtual reality simulators, virtual reality and video animations of interventions, a digital learning environment and conference rooms for 200 people.

Safe and effective surgery is the sum of motor skills, decision making, recognition of anatomical landmarks and dissection planes and stereometric competency. Fifty percent of postoperative complications are caused by errors during surgery. Training these skills at a training centre in a stress-free environment where errors can be made and evaluated without burden to patients is the key to improving outcomes of surgery. A dedicated training environment with structured learning programs will shorten the time needed to hone the competencies of trainees and increase patient safety.

The ASC is an incubator for faculty from the Amsterdam University Medical Centre, other universities in the Netherlands, in Europe and far beyond. An incubator where people and resources are connected to build a New Way of Training. For low- and middle-income countries, a New Way of Training can build a scalable, low-cost and mobile learning environment which can be implemented on-site. Teach the Teacher courses will be provided at the ASC with the objective that these teachers will train others on-site to become teachers.

Health care professionals from countries around the world have been training at the Amsterdam Skills Centre since its opening in February 2019. The ASC is an independent, 3,700 m2 facility on 10,000 m2 of Amsterdam University Medical Centre property. The proximity to Amsterdam UMC provides access to a wide range of highly qualified medical experts. Located just 15 minutes from Schiphol Airport, the ASC is perfectly positioned for international medical professionals and global corporate partners.