A Look into the Data Integration Centers: The Data Integration Center Leipzig – Comprehensive Support for Medical Researchers

In the new SMITH News series “A Look into the Data Integration Centers”, each month a Data Integration Center established within the SMITH Consortium of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) will be presented. The Data Integration Centers, which were initially established at university medical centers, provide secure and privacy-compliant access to high-quality data from routine care. The third part of this series is dedicated to the Data Integration Center Leipzig. In a short introduction, the team of the Data Integration Center Leipzig explains how it supports researchers and what special tasks the Center is currently working on.

What services do you offer researchers?

The Data Integration Center Leipzig provides comprehensive support for researchers utilizing clinical data.

We…

• …assist researchers in preparing their applications.
• …verify whether the requested data is available and can be provided.
• …advise on the GDPR-compliant use of medical data.
• …supply data for research projects.
• …offer guidance on data provision and extraction for academic theses.
• …review data usage applications and forward them to the usage commission for approval.
  

Through ad hoc web meetings, we can address questions promptly and provide support whenever needed.

What special tasks are you currently working on?

We are currently providing trustee services for the HerediCare project to establish a nationwide registry for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. This registry will enable scientific institutions to document and analyze pseudonymized patient data in a structured and long-term manner. The aim is to gain new insights into the development and progression of the disease and to further develop treatment approaches.

The trust office of the Data Integration Center Leipzig will manage the patient data for HerediCare. The programs E-PIX and gPAS developed by the University Medical Center Greifswald will be used for this purpose.

Staff at the Data Integration Center Leipzig (as of December 2024): 12

MII Use Cases involving the Data Integration Center Leipzig under current funding: ACRIBiS, EyeMatics, GeMTeX, INTERPOLAR, PrivateAIM

Fun Fact: The Data Integration Center Leipzig has relocated five times already.

Since 2018, the university medical sites of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) have been setting up Data Integration Centers funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In 2023, the Data Integration Centers of the university hospitals were integrated into the Network of University Medicine (NUM). Since then, they have been funded by the BMBF as part of the NUM, but continue to be managed by the MII.