SMITH Closed Meeting in Jena | May 2022

After two years of online meetings, the stakeholders in the SMITH Consortium met again in Jena on May 18 and 19 for a closed meeting. The central topic of this year’s second SMITH retreat was the project progress in data use at the end of the development and networking phase of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII). In addition, a look was taken at the planned achievements of the Data Integration Centers in the next funding period of the MII starting in 2023. A total of 70 participants gathered at Friedrich Schiller University Jena for this occasion. 

There was also another guest welcomed at the closed meeting: Karoline Buckow, scientific officer at TMF e.V. In her presentation, she talked about the development of the MII Projectathons and reported on the findings from the 6th run. “The Projectathons have the potential to optimize data sharing processes via the exchange of experiences across sites,” Buckow noted. 

Other topics discussed at the SMITH closed meeting included an evaluation of the cross-consortium POLAR project, data use projects at SMITH sites, and project statuses in the SMITH use cases ASIC, HELP, and PheP.

Also at the evening event in the JenTower above the roofs of Jena, the project results were discussed in a very lively and constructive manner.

At the end, Prof. Dr. Markus Löffler, SMITH Consortium leader, summarized: “We have tightened our collegiality, friendship and goals.” In particular, he said, the usefulness of the emerging and already established data infrastructure is increasingly at the heart of the projects in SMITH. In addition, he said, the focus is increasingly on content, and the project is becoming more medical. “Discussing honestly and intensively while finding ways to solve things, that’s the spirit SMITH has always had.” Now, he said, it’s a matter of continuing to implement the solutions with the shared experiences.

The next SMITH Consortium closed meeting will be held Aug. 31-Sept. 1 at the Melanchthonianum, University of Halle.