Vivantes joins the HiGHmed consortium
Foto: Guido Kollmeier
On 1 July, Vivantes Netzwerk für Gesundheit GmbH joins the HiGHmed network. HiGHmed is a network of 13 leading university hospitals and medical research institutions in Germany and Luxembourg, which was established in the context of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The aim of the network's member sites is to improve the digital accessibility of medical patient data for clinical research, teaching and healthcare by setting up local Medical Data Integration Centres (MeDIC).
With eight clinics and one specialised hospital at eight locations in Berlin, Vivantes is the largest municipal hospital company in Germany and treats more than 500,000 patients per year. This corresponds to around a third of all hospital patients in Berlin. The utilisation of patient data for the further development of sustainable treatment options and care structures is of great importance to Vivantes.
By providing the clinical care data collected during ongoing operations, Vivantes can achieve a valuable expansion of the database of the MII master data set. In return, Vivantes hopes to be able to feed the knowledge gained directly back into patient care. In addition, Vivantes' interdisciplinary collaboration with leading university hospitals and research institutions will be intensified, which will drive the development of new treatment methods and diagnostic procedures. For example, patients can benefit more quickly from personalised treatment methods and innovative therapies based on current research projects and results.
"Data saves lives. That's why Vivantes is joining the HiGHmed network. Because the intelligent, cross-location and cross-sector networking of health data will not only enable better research, but will also noticeably improve patient care as a result. Vivantes will therefore not only use its digital patient data generated during treatment internally, but also make it available to external research. We are proud to be one of the first non-university hospital companies to be accepted by the MII," says Dr Johannes Danckert, Chairman of the Vivantes Management Board.
The cooperation with HiGHmed will significantly complement and expand Vivantes' existing digital health projects, in particular the Digital Progress Hub Health CAEHR. Integration into the HiGHmed network will further strengthen the technological and methodological basis of Vivantes' Clinical Data Centre. In the CAEHR project, for example, the improved exchange and integration of patient data across different institutions can be driven forward - for example, the digital transfer of data between Vivantes hospitals and various external rehabilitation clinics is planned. The intensive collaboration in the HiGHmed network enables the faster and more efficient implementation of the research results generated in clinical practice.
"In the CAEHR digital progress hub, the two major players in Berlin healthcare, Vivantes and Charité, are already working closely together to sustainably improve the treatment options for cardiovascular patients. Since CAEHR builds on the preliminary work of the HiGHmed Use Cases Cardiology, we can work with Vivantes to bring the many years of preliminary work of the HiGHmed consortium into broad application," says Prof Dr Roland Eils, founding director of the BIH@Charité - Center of Digital Health and spokesperson for the HiGHmed consortium.
In order to make the collaboration with HiGHmed effective, the primary aim is to further expand Vivantes' Clinical Data Centre. In addition to the technical interfaces to the MII, this also includes the establishment of standardised data usage processes and the creation of a specialised coordination office that acts as an interface between Vivantes, the HiGHmed partners and other research institutions. Future projects are also planned in intensive care and emergency medicine.
"We at HiGHmed e.V. are delighted to welcome Vivantes as the third non-university partner in our network. This shows once again that our network, which was created within the framework of university medicine, can also offer attractive services for partners beyond this. HiGHmed will benefit greatly from Vivantes' expertise and use it to pave the way for the participation of other clinical institutions and thus significantly support medical research in Germany," says Stefan Becker, Managing Director of HiGHmed e.V.