Digital Medicine
Translation Hub Digital Medicine
Digitization is reshaping research and healthcare. The advent of electronic health records and clinical information systems has significantly enhanced healthcare quality in many countries of the world. By integrating clinical data, genetic profiles, physiological measurements as well as information on environmental exposures, and lifestyle factors, clinicians can make real-time, informed decisions, paving the way for personalized medicine.
BIH’s Translation Hub Digital Medicine therefore plans to combine its ongoing work in this area and that of partner institutes to improve data use in research and clinical practice.
We will do this by establishing the Translation Hub Digital Medicine as a scientific hub, focused on key areas such as health informatics, artificial intelligence and big data. Its activities will include, for example, developing IT infrastructures, big data analytical tools and mobile healthcare apps.
The translation hub aims at connecting sources of health data in Germany and ultimately at establishing a leading digital medicine infrastructure in Berlin. A Steering Committee to govern and lead the hub’s developments was elected by the researching community and is comprised of the following translation hub members according to their fields of expertise:
Name |
Felix Balzer (elected spokesperson) |
Roland Eils |
Frederick Klauschen |
Fabian Prasser |
Kerstin Ritter |
Petra Ritter (elected spokesperson) |
Sylvia Thun (elected spokesperson) |
Several activities are ongoing to further shape the contents and developments of the translation hub:
BIH and Charité have a strong role in the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) and related activities within the Network of University Medicine (NUM). As part of the HiGHmed consortium, BIH and Charité have established a Medical Data Integration Center (MeDIC) and have leading roles in several projects that use the associated national data sharing infrastructure.
Regularly organized workshops with members of the BIH Translational Research Commons follow the goal to establish an active community, to engage in joint research activities and to identify technology needs and requirements with regard to the available infrastructures. This forum ensures the opportunity for scientists to meet technologists to discuss scientific projects as well as use cases to challenge the IT infrastructure that is currently being built up. The workshops will be continued among the internal developments as well as other events, such as the BIH Innovation’s Digital Health Forum.
Besides the provision of administrative services and server infrastructures, the BIH IT Core Facility is leading the development of the ‘Health Data Platform (HDP)’ for the standardized and interoperable integration of data. Together with additional units such as a Data Use & Access Committee (DUAC), the HDP shall enable researchers and clinicians to access and efficiently use data from the Charité’s healthcare and research context.
The HPC Core Facility provides high-performance computing resources with a focus on processing human genome data to scientists from BIH, Charité, and MDC. The Core Facility is continuously improved to serve the needs of scientists and covers topics such as user management systems, access and rights management as well as IT and data security.
BIH is cooperating with the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), among other things by supporting the department with junior professorships. In addition, Prof. Dr. Axel Radlach Pries acts as spokesperson for the ECDF digital health department.
Collaboration with Charité's Institute of Medical Informatics (directed by Prof. Dr. Dr. Felix Balzer) and other related research areas and groups are in development.