Goethe University founds Institute for Digital Medicine
Goethe University Frankfurt establishes an Institute for Digital Medicine to advance research in healthcare.
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Goethe University in Frankfurt has founded the "Institute for Digital Medicine and Clinical Data Sciences" to promote the digitalization of the healthcare system. The founding director of the institute is Prof. Janne Vehreschild, who is not only a doctor but also a database and software developer. The aim of the institute is to make healthcare more efficient through the use of modern technologies. To this end, the Dr. Rolf M. Schwiete Foundation is providing it with funding of around 1.2 million euros over the next five years. The necessary specialists are to be trained and educated accordingly. This is according to a press release from Goethe University.
The Institute for Digital Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt is intended to link research with practice in the region. For the area of data science and digitalization, "we have already established the University Center for Digital Health Care in 2021, in which the topics of digital strategy, digitalization projects and the promotion of young talent will be jointly promoted," explains Prof. Jürgen Graf, Medical Director and Chairman of the Board of the University Hospital Frankfurt.
AI methods to revolutionize medicine
There is already a similar project in Lower Saxony: the Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Causal Methods in Medicine (CAIMed) is currently being established there, which also aims to revolutionize healthcare. Researchers from the fields of computer science and medicine are also working together there to develop AI methods and applications for personalized medicine – such as how AI methods can be used in medical decision support. There is also a focus on linking research and healthcare data as well as the use of AI and causal methods in medicine.
"In the nationwide Medical Informatics Initiative (MII), great progress has already been made in the areas of data exchange and the secondary use of clinical data," the press release states. Physician and interoperability expert Sylvia Thun from the MII has also already spoken to heise online about the relevance of health data, for example in relation to gender-specific differences in research. To this end, she has also called for medical guidelines and textbooks to be updated in order to prevent misdiagnosis and treatment errors.
Data for research
As early as 2021, the Expert Council, which was chaired at the time by general practitioner Ferdinand Gerlach, also from Goethe University, proposed to "make better use of the possibilities of digitalization to improve medical research and patient care", according to the press release. In this context, the Expert Council also proposed the concept of "broad consent" – for simplified access to health data. The concept was recently discussed again at the Registry Days.
In addition to data from hundreds of medical registers, research data from electronic patient records should also be requested in future via a national contact point at the Health Research Data Center and then made available more easily than before. Further data will come from telemedicine and digital health applications.
(mack)