Town of health care

For three centuries, Lausanne is renowned world-wide as a town that values its top-class health care services, the excellence of its specialist doctors and state-of-the-art technological equipment. This reputation continues to this day as this welcoming city has made itself a solid reputation as a centre for health care and well-being, as well as being a pole of medical engineering.

The renown of Lausanne in this very precise area is very old as the first hospitals were opened here in the 11th century and the Academy of Medicine in the 16th century.  Famous physicians, and especially the famous Dr Tissot who was to have many emulators, received patients from far and wide. Medicine has been taught in the University since the 19th century, and hospitals, hospices, maternity clinics and private clinics began to spring up. The 20th century was to perpetuate the tradition of hospitality and health care, endowing Lausanne not only with the image of a place that cared about human health and well-being, but also of a centre of expertise in the area of studies, research and high-level medical conferences.

Lausanne, faithful to this calling and stimulated by various factors relating to its ideal geographical situation in a very attractive environment at the centre of Europe with its numerous service activities (schools, banks, insurance companies, etc.) as well as its leading role as a tourist centre, naturally places great importance on the question of health.

The presence in this city of human proportions of the Vaud University Teaching Hospital (CHUV), of the University (with its Faculty of Medicine), of the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and of several medical research centres also serves to cater to this same calling. All this activity, conducted and developed by many physicians, professors, researchers and other scientists working on state-of-the-art technologies, has over time attracted major international medical conventions to Lausanne. All of the work thus undertaken upstream of the practice of medicine and hospital care already confer a certain aura on the town within the international scientific community. That is why, quite logically, this medical and hospital aspect is embodied by the health care and well-being infrastructures and facilities.