New project promotes skills for the use of health data in teaching, research and practice

The Ruhr metropolitan region has the highest density of hospitals in Germany, supported by three medical universities and other institutions for training in the healthcare professions. Initiatives such as the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) and the European cloud alternative GAIA-X are already driving the development and utilisation of healthcare data - with a focus on inpatient care. Data-based research into outpatient care has so far received little attention.

The project "DIM.RUHR: Data Competence Centre for Interprofessional Health Data Use in the Ruhr Metropolis", which was launched in December 2022 and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, aims to close this gap. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fraunhofer ISST and the University of Health will be working together in future under the leadership of the Chair of Health Informatics at Witten/Herdecke University, headed by Chair Professor Sven Meister. The project partners are taking an interprofessional approach to training, networking healthcare locations and creating new data spaces. They are also opening up the Ruhr innovation space for researchers working with health data.

Strengthening skills for the secure handling of data

"We need to take a closer look at outpatient care areas as a place where interprofessional healthcare data is used," says Prof Dr Sven Meister. "Different competences are required to handle this data securely - this is the only way we can fully exploit the potential for research and care. We are now working on this together in DIM.RUHR."

On the part of Witten/Herdecke University, the Chair of Didactics and Educational Research, the Chair and Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Care Research (IZVF) and the Institute of General Practice and Primary Care (iamag) are involved. The Department of General Practice (AM RUB) and the Digital Health and Health Care Research working groups are involved on behalf of Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The Department of Community Health (Chair of Health Technologies) is involved from the University of Health and the Department of Health Care Systems from the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering.