MIRACUM Symposium 2022 in Giessen sets direction for MII expansion and extension phase

Foto von Hörsaal mit vollem Plenum, aufgenommen von hinten

From September 20-21, 2022, the MIRACUM symposium took place at the Justus Liebig University Giessen. With pride we can now report on a successful event and make the presentations available.

The number of participants alone, almost 200 guests from all over Germany (of which about 50 were connected online via livestream), showed the great interest in this year’s symposium.

At the beginning of the event, the attendees were welcomed by representatives of the Justus Liebig University, the Technical University of Central Hesse and the consortium leader Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Prokosch, as well as a greeting from the Hessian Minister for Science and Art, Angela Dorn, in the form of a video message.

In terms of content, the congress started with one of the most important building blocks in the structure of future medical research work, the “Data Integration Center (DIZ) as a digital platform and service provider in medical research support”. In the future, “real world data” from health care documentation will be made available for medical research via the data integration centers (more information on DIZ can be found here). The presentations provided an opportunity to see for oneself the breadth of tasks within a DIZ; from the DIZ as a service and consulting center to the connection of external hospitals to questions of economic efficiency, to name just a few examples.

With a view to the start of the expansion and extension phase of the MII from 01.01.2023 (Medical Informatics Initiative), the focus was naturally also on the future. Thus, in the session “MIRACUM in the Research Environment of German Medical Informatics”, focal points such as synergies between the DIZ and the Network University Medicine (NUM) or also opportunities and challenges due to the Hospital Future Act (KHZG) and the National Research Data Infrastructure (nfdi) were considered in more detail.

In the full program of the symposium, however, the practical relevance was not forgotten. On the contrary, the topic of patient care was even highlighted in two different sessions. Topics in this regard were (in excerpts) the translation of the Molecular Tumor Board of Use Case 3 of the MIRACUM consortium, regulatory requirements of medical software or the usability of swarm intelligence in the medical field. The Digital Progress Hubs Health (MIDIA-Hub, MiHUBx, LeMeDaRT and DECIDE) and the Young Investigator Groups (link to more information) were able to impress with their reports and the presentation of first results.

The focus this year was also on thinking outside the box. Selected initiatives of digitization in medicine, such as the Research Data Center Health (located at the BfArM) or the relevance of MII for pediatrics were presented and discussed.

Last but not least, one of the biggest challenges in medical informatics was again pointed out this year: the education, training and continuing education of future specialists. The demand in the field of human resources is growing every year and currently cannot be met either in business or in academia. The online-based Master “Biomedical Informatics and Data Science” (BIDS) and its certificate program, which are significantly promoted/supervised by the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences, are intended to counteract this (further information Master BIDS).

We would like to thank the international speakers for their impressive presentations and our colleagues in Giessen for the labor-intensive but very successful organization. We are already looking forward to the next symposium in 2023.

The slides for the individual presentations are now available on the event page.

MIRACUM Symposium event page