Medical Informatics for Better Therapies
9 August 2017
BMBF funds consortia with Heidelberg and Mannheim ties
Photo: peshkova/fotolia.com
The university hospitals in Heidelberg and Mannheim, in association with both medical faculties of Heidelberg University, are key participants in the Medical Informatics Initiative launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). They are among the partners in the consortia HiGHmed (Heidelberg Faculty) and MIRACUM (Mannheim Faculty) that are slated to receive nearly 60 million euros in funding over the next four years. Nearly twelve million euros of that total will go to the Heidelberg and Mannheim researchers.
The BMBF is financing a total of four consortia comprised of 17 university hospitals and approx. 40 other partners that will begin in 2018 to build data integration centres for digitally networking medical care. The aim is to link the ever-growing treasure trove of data – from radiologic imaging data to genomic analyses – in a national infrastructure to gain new knowledge for better healthcare research and delivery. By funding the Medical Informatics Initiative, the ministry of research aims to integrate the opportunities of digitalisation into medical care.
The HiGHmed Consortium – short for “Heidelberg-Göttingen-Hannover Medical Informatics” – unites three leading international university hospitals with complementary expertise. In collaboration with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and other partners, HiGHmed – coordinated by the Heidelberg University Hospital – aims to more effectively address hospital infections through new solutions in medical informatics and comprehensive data exchange. Another goal is more effective treatment of cancers and cardiovascular diseases through personalised approaches. Heidelberg will receive approximately 8.4 million euros of the 28.6 million funding total.
The “Medical Informatics in Research and Care in University Medicine” (MIRACUM) Consortium unites Erlangen, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Gießen, Magdeburg, Mainz, Marburg and Mannheim with nonmedical universities and partners in the IT industry. Within the consortium, medical research and healthcare data, i.e., from imaging, biochemical and molecular genetic studies, will be combined in a medical informatics infrastructure and used for research and treatment both within and beyond the individual institutions. One particular focus is how to condense the wealth of medical information and visualise it in a process that will help make reaching therapeutic decisions easier. The MIRACUM Consortium will receive total funding in the amount of 32.1 million euros, approximately 3.3 million of which is earmarked for the Medical Faculty Mannheim.
