SMITH organizes partner dialogue meeting

Transfer between research and practice

On Friday, February 6th, 2020, the SMITH Consortium held the first partner dialogue meeting for non-university hospitals and medical networks. In an open exchange between around 80 participants from hospitals, medical networks, associations and industrial partners, the opportunities, which result from a collaborative partnership, were discussed. Improved health services research, faster transfer from research to health care, long-term improvement of diagnosis, prevention and therapy and thus increased attractiveness for physicians in hospitals and medical networks are important added values ​​that result from the cooperation with SMITH.

In short lectures, the representatives of the consortium presented the structure of the Data Integration Centers (DIC), the data protection aspects, the added value of the three use cases, the SMITH Service Platform and the range of solutions for transferring the SMITH Architecture to the needs of the non-university sector.

Jochen Brink, President of the Hospital Association of North Rhine-Westphalia (KGNW), spoke about the requirements for a collaboration from the hospitals perspective. The KGNW expressly supports an equal partnership and an operating model adapted to the technological, organizational and economic framework of the regional hospitals.

The in-depth final discussion with all participants showed the importance of an effective cooperation between partners to realize the opportunities of personalized medicine for patients and service providers.

A continuation of the partner dialogue is planned for September this year, in which the focus will be on the perspective of hospitals and medical networks.

The speakers’ presentation slides at a glance:

• Dr. Danny Ammon, Head of Data Integration Center, Jena University Hospital
• Prof. Dr. Markus Löffler, Consortium Leader SMITH, Director of the Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology (IMISE), Leipzig University
• Volker Lowitsch, Managing Director Healthcare IT Solutions GmbH
• Prof. Dr. Gernot Marx, Director of the Clinic for Operative Intensive Care Medicine and Intermediate Care, University Hospital RWTH Aachen
• Dr. Sven Meister, Head of Department Digitization in HealthCare, Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST
• Prof. Dr. André Scherag, Director Institute for Medical Statistics, Informatics and Data Science, Jena University Hospital
• Dr. Thomas Wendt, Head of Data Integration Center, University of Leipzig Medical Center