SMITH hosts Science Day and Closed Meeting at RWTH Aachen University Hospital | November 2022
More than 100 SMITH project members met on November 23 and 24, 2022 for the SMITH Science Day and the last closed meeting of this year. The meeting was at the same time the last project meeting in the current development and networking phase of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII), so the focus was mainly on the achieved results as well as on the activities planned for the upcoming funding phase starting in 2023. Prof. Dr. Markus Löffler, consortium leader of SMITH, and Prof. Dr. Stefan Uhlig, Dean of the Medical Faculty of RWTH Aachen University, opened the event with praising words for the project team members. “You have worked hard over the last five years to link research and care – the results are impressive!” A total of 31 posters and 13 oral presentations had been submitted for the SMITH Science Day.
With this in mind, the presenters in the first session of talks presented the results of the use cases and some data Use projects. In the two poster sessions that followed, scientists reported on their work within SMITH, the results and the challenges that their research has revealed so far. Topics included AI support in critical care medicine, research data management, and automated detection of antibiotic resistance. The second presentation session addressed lessons learned from data provision, research, and teaching in SMITH.
Finally, the following day, the SMITH closed meeting looked ahead. Presentations included the six new cross-consortium use cases in which SMITH will be centrally involved starting next year. “With the new use cases, we want to build on what we have already been able to establish,” states Prof. Dr. André Scherag, 1st speaker in the SMITH consortium. A workshop on open source software development in the MII concluded the meeting. Prof. Löffler summarized the key findings from the past two days in his closing speech. “The infrastructure development of the MII has progressed and data extractions have been initiated in many projects. National standards have also been established and the benefits of the MII are visible in the first projects. With the projects, the MII is celebrating its halfway party.” SMITH has been able to develop IT solutions within this framework that have been proven to facilitate processes in research and patient care. However, legal and technical challenges, including interoperability of medical data, still exist. In the upcoming expansion and enhancement phase, there is potential to complete and refine the established structures and processes.
Check out SMITH Twitter and SMITH LinkedIn for more impressions and photos of the event.
The abstracts for the SMITH Science Day posters and talks have been summarized in an abstract book, which is available as pdf file on the SMITH website.