The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is currently planning to perform several alterations designed to digitalize the field of medicine in Germany. The Medical Informatics Initiative can provide a new guideline for implementing new IT solutions in health care and, at the same time, to enhance data transition processes from health care institutions to universities and research centers. Creating infrastructure is instrumental in ensuring the successful outcome of the whole undertaking.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is planning to provide a total of 150 million euros for the implementation of the Initiative over a period of four years. According to Gehring and Eulenfeld (2018), DIFUTURE, HiGHmed, MIRACUM, and SMITH, the four successful consortia, will receive 30 million euros each, as they are instrumental in the Key Phase of the Initiative. Haux (2018) states that creating data integration centers is crucial to the development of a more comprehensive infrastructure that allows for proper transition, storage, and utilization of data collected by health care organizations and research centers. According to the experts, the collection of biomedical data has been revolutionized in recent years by the advent of several technologies, including massive parallel sequencing and imaging technologies (Semler et al., 2018). Moreover, most of the information currently collected by health care institutions is stored in digital form. The time has come to connect various data sources into one hub, which can provide information to both researchers and medical personnel.
The main objective of the Initiative is to encourage the creation of a common electronic health record and a set of interconnected research data sources. Gehring and Eulenfeld (2018) claim that registries, biobanks, trial databases, or collections of “omics” data still tend to rely on their own standards and patterns, which currently does not allow for any kind of integration. University hospitals are the key to proper implementation of the tasks listed in the Initiative, as they already provide a connection between research and health care. Currently, 17 of the 33 German university hospitals are part of the above-mentioned consortia. New conceptual frameworks will be set up in all of them in order to facilitate secure data sharing.
Reference
Gehring, S., & Eulenfeld, R. (2018). German Medical Informatics Initiative: Unlocking data for research and health care. Methods of Information in Medicine, 57(1), 46-49. Web.
Haux, R. (2018). Health information systems – from present to future?Methods of Information in Medicine, 57(1), 43-45. Web.
Semler, S. C., Wissing, F., & Heyder, R. (2018). German Medical Informatics Initiative: A national approach to integrating health data from patient care and medical research. Methods of Information in Medicine, 57(1), 50-56. Web.