A Look into the Data Integration Centers: Near Real-Time Data Provision at the University Hospital Bonn
In the SMITH news series “A Look into the Data Integration Centers”, a different Data Integration Center established within the SMITH Consortium of the German Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) is introduced each month. Originally established at university medical sites, the Data Integration Centers enable secure and data protection–compliant access to high-quality data from routine clinical care. In the eighth part of our series, the team at the Bonn Data Integration Center demonstrates how a flexible organizational structure can enable automated, near real-time data provision from clinical care for research purposes.
How is the Data Integration Center Bonn structured?
The Data Integration Center Bonn is embedded as a functional unit within the Division of Medical-Scientific Technology Development and Coordination (MWTek) at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB).
The MWTek division has established software development and quality management procedures certified for the development of medical device software. Through a matrix-like organizational structure, the Data Integration Center benefits from these procedures and actively contributes to their further development.
In a matrix organization, employees report to multiple supervisors simultaneously—for example, to both a functional department and a project team. This structure allows for flexible adaptation to complex requirements and efficient use of resources.
What services do you offer researchers?
At the core of the Data Integration Center Bonn’s work lies the provision of data from the electronic documentation of clinical care at UKB—mainly for internal data use projects focused on research or quality assurance. However, cross-site data use projects via the German Portal for MedicalResearch Data (FDPG) can also be realized in collaboration with the Data Integration Center Bonn.
The practical experience and user requirements gained in these projects feed directly into the software development efforts of the MWTek division. These developments support, among other things, scalable and auditable application management and enable near real-time provision and transformation of data, including high-resolution biosignals.
A distinctive feature of the Bonn Data Integration Center is its ability to provide fully automated, near real-time data directly from the hospital’s operational systems—for example, to support clinical decision-making systems.
Which innovative projects has the Data Integration Center Bonn implemented?
The Data Integration Center Bonn serves as a close technical partner of the Network of University Medicine (NUM) dashboard team, which is coordinated within the MWTek division. In this collaboration, the Data Integration Center functions as the first testing and validation instance for new versions of the Dashboard Data Processor (DDP).
This federated analysis and aggregation tool is fully based on the interoperability standards of the MII and is used within the NUM framework.
The provision of dashboard data also serves as a testing environment for the Data Integration Center infrastructure, which enables “on-demand” data provision directly from source systems. With the new NUM funding phase, dashboard functionalities can be further developed within the Surveillance and Rapid Response (SAR) infrastructure and specifically adapted to the needs of various stakeholders. SAR aims to consolidate immediate capacities in university medicine to ensure sustainable pandemic management.
Since 2018, the university medical sites of the Medical Informatics Initiative have been setting up Data Integration Centers funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR). In 2023, the Data Integration Centers of the university hospitals were integrated into the Network of University Medicine. Since then, they have been funded by the BMFTR as part of the NUM, but continue to be managed by the MII.