HiGHmed - MeDICs

The four consortia of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) have established Medical Data Integration Centres (MeDICs) at their university medical sites. In these facilities, research and care data of a university hospital are collected, whereby data quality and data protection play an essential role.

The MeDIC is usually a facility in the hospital and is generally closely linked to the clinical computer centres, which ensures a close connection to the systems of patient care. The tasks of the MeDIC include the transfer of data from a wide range of data-providing systems, the consolidation and processing of this data and the assurance of data quality and data protection. The processed data are then made available for use in medical research and research results are fed back into care via the MeDICs.

In a MeDIC, the technical and organisational prerequisites are thus created for the cross-location use of data between health care and medical research. The MeDICs thus enable medical data to be collected, merged and exchanged in such a way that they can be optimally used in care and research - even multiple times. Standardisation, reusability and exchangeability of data play an important role in this. In future, researchers with a request should be able to use harmonised data from all German university hospitals within a uniform legal framework.

The MeDICs will be maintained as a permanent, sustainable infrastructure, thus improving digital, targeted care and making the federal research landscape fit for the future.