Pôle Santé Campus in Sion – Foundation stone laid

The Pôle Santé Campus in Valais will bring together on the same site training activities in health and social work, as well as research and innovation in the fields of health and sport. The project is valued at CHF 96.6 million.

The campus will bring together the expertise of the Haute Ecole de Santé (HES Nursing and Research Institute) and the Haute Ecole et Ecole Supérieure de Travail Social (HES Childcare and Socioprofessional Masters) of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis, the EPFL, the Observatoire valaisan de la santé (OVS), The Ark Foundation and SpArk, the centre of excellence in movement sciences and technologies. Its proximity to the Valais Hospital and the SuvaCare rehabilitation clinic in French-speaking Switzerland will generate synergies and enable interdisciplinary training and research to be developed.

The Clinique romande de réadaptation SuvaCare (CRR-SUVA) in Sion currently houses a chair in neuroscience from the EPFL’s Faculty of Life Sciences, as well as a laboratory working in the field of motor rehabilitation. Several start-ups in the field of digital health, supported by The Ark Foundation, are also located on the site. The Pôle Santé Campus will not only bring knowledge together, but will also strengthen the synergies between the various players in the Pôle Santé to encourage knowledge transfer, research and innovation. The Pôle Santé Campus, with its immediate proximity to the Valais Hospital and the CRR-SUVA, offers an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen the interdisciplinary nature of training and research. This synergy between education and medical practice should help to shape a new generation of highly competent and innovative healthcare professionals and combat the shortage of nursing staff.

The Pôle Santé Campus will also optimise the occupancy rate of training facilities (classrooms, auditoriums, simulation centre, practical laboratories, etc.), concentrate support structures (media library, crèche, etc.), generate ideas and provide direct access to patients for certain training and research activities.

The Pôle Santé Campus premises will host :

• The Bachelor of Science in Nursing programme
• The R&D Institute of the Haute Ecole de Santé and its research units
  postgraduate training (CAS/DAS) at the Haute Ecole de Santé
• The Maturité spécialisée santé year and the complementary health modules (MSsa and MCsa);
  ES courses in Child Education and Socio-Professional Action at the Haute Ecole and Ecole Supérieure de Travail Social
• The Ark incubator
• the Valaisan Health Observatory
• EPFL researchers and their health-related projects
• SpArk.
• The Pôle Santé Campus will cover 17,114 m2 of floor space, including 12,125 m2 for the HES-SO Valais-Wallis, 2,695 m2 for SpArk, 1,131 m2 for The Ark Foundation, 873 m2 for EPFL and 290 m2 for the Observatoire valaisan de la santé. The building loans approved by the Valais Parliament total CHF 85.9 million.

Following an estimated increase in inflation of CHF 10,715,200, the revised estimate stands at CHF 96,615,200. The share of the City of Sion and the Canton of Valais amount to CHF 7.4 million and CHF 72.5 million respectively. The contribution from the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SEFRI) is currently estimated at CHF 16.7 million.

Source: Press Release Canton of Valais

📸 3D Picture: cois.ch