DIFUTURE - Data Integration for Future Medicine
In order to better research and treat multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, the Data Integration for Future Medicine consortium – DIFUTURE for short – has brought together a large amount of data from healthcare and research and made it searchable across all locations. This opens up new possibilities for health research.
In addition to setting up a decentralised research data infrastructure in Germany, the DIFUTURE partners – together with other sites from all consortia – are involved in a wide range of use cases that demonstrate the benefits of data infrastructures and analyses for medical care.
Phases within the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII)
The Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) has been building data infrastructures at university hospitals since 2018. The MII partners have already demonstrated the added value of their IT solutions in practice using a wide range of use cases – from intensive care to cancer medicine. The focus of the expansion and extension phase (2023 – 2026) is on extended collaboration between the university hospitals and their cooperation with new partners, particularly from regional healthcare.
Three universities of excellence have joined forces with their university hospitals and other clinical partners in DIFUTURE. The result is a unique synthesis of knowledge from medicine, computer science, biostatistics and bioinformatics. International networking is a further strength.
In the concept phase, the expertise of four consortium partners (Technische Universität München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, University of Augsburg) was brought together to improve the exchange and use of data from patient care, clinical and biomedical research across institutions and to demonstrate their added value.
The aim was to develop the necessary organisational and technical concepts for this. To this end, concepts for data integration centres (DIC) and for use cases that demonstrate the measurable success of data exchange were developed. In preparation for the concept phase, DIFUTURE developed eight use cases. The disease-related topics are neurology, cancer and cardiology. One use case from the field of neurology is to undergo an audit. The aim is to achieve synergy effects with the other areas.
As a result of the concept phase, an application for the development and networking phase of the medical informatics initiative was prepared and a detailed plan for the further development of the relevant infrastructures of the consortium partners was submitted, which includes not only technical and organisational measures, but also measures for the further development of medical informatics.
About the Medical Informatics Initiative
DIFUTURE is one of four consortia funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII). The aim of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) is to improve research opportunities and patient care through innovative IT solutions. These should enable the exchange and utilisation of data from patient care, clinical and biomedical research across the boundaries of institutions and locations. In the development and networking phase (2018 – 2022), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the establishment of data integration centres at university hospitals with over 200 million euros. From 2023 to 2026, cooperation between the university hospitals is to be expanded and new partners added. In addition, the BMBF is funding six Digital Health Progress Hubs with around 50 million euros (2021 – 2025) as part of the MII. Their task is to incorporate the pioneering work of the university hospitals into other areas of the healthcare system, from outpatient care to rehabilitation and aftercare.
© 2024 DIFUTURE