Press release of MIRACUM consortium

12/09/2018. On September 1st 2018 the University Medicine Dresden and the University Medicine Greifswald officially joined the MIRACUM consortium. With about 5.4 million euros funding from the BMBF in total, Dresden and Greifswald will establish their own data integration centres over the next 3.5 years, actively contribute to the success of the MIRACUM consortium and thus also to the success of the German medical informatics initiative (MII).

An ecosystem for medical research and care at the University Medicine Dresden
“Due to new technologies, patients can be characterized and treated more and more individually. For this purpose, patient data must be analyzed with system medicine methodologies, taking into account the strict data protection requirements. Managing such large amounts of heterogeneous data requires an appropriate efficient IT infrastructure. Further this can be the basis for a general electronic patient record for all service providers.” says Prof. Albrecht, Medical Director of the University Hospital Dresden. With the establishment of the data integration centre, Dresden creates the necessary infrastructure. Patient data can then be used for research, e.g. to link disorders with genetic markers or to integrate innovative therapies more quickly into patient care.
“To support doctors and researchers, we will create an ecosystem of high-quality tools.” adds Professor Martin Sedlmayr, project manager in Dresden and professor of medical informatics at the Institute of Medical Informatics and Biometry. Regarding to his expertise, Dresden will contribute to the (further) development and provision of the research data repository based on the OMOP data model and the corresponding OHDSI tools for visualization and evaluation.

University Medicine Greifswald contributes expertise in data protection and the innovative project KAS+ to MIRACUM
With the introduction of a research-supporting EHR system (KAS+), the University Medicine Greifswald has done important groundwork for future challenges.  “The KAS+ already enables us to make data from patient care automatically available to research. MIRACUM allows us to share this data with other hospitals as well. At the same time, MIRACUM gives an important new momentum for the further development of our infrastructures at Greifswald.” explains Prof. Wolfgang Hoffmann, project manager for the research part of the KAS+ and managing director of the Institute for Community Medicine.
As Consent Competence Center, Greifswald will support the MIRACUM partners in establishing procedures for the secure storage and use of personal data considering all relevant data protection regulations. “The independent Trusted Third Party of the University Medicine Greifswald represents an important resource for a multitude of research projects. We are pleased to contribute the software tools developed in Greifswald and the experience gained to the MIRACUM consortium.” explains the Dean of Greifswald University Medicine, Prof. Max P. Baur.
With now 10 universities, two universities of applied sciences and one industrial partner, MIRACUM is the largest of the four consortia funded in the MII. Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Prokosch, Chair of Medical Informatics at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and leader of the MIRACUM consortium, is pleased to report: “The strength of MIRACUM is the bundling of partners with many synergistic competences. With the new partners Dresden and Greifswald we have successfully expanded the consortium with two important competence centres.”

Source: MIRACUM