Summary
This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on the
German Medical Informatics Initiative. The Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) was
launched within the scope of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s
(BMBF) Medical Informatics Funding Scheme, with the goal of developing infrastructure
for the integration of clinical data from patient care and medical research in Germany.
Its work is to be performed over the course of a decade (2016–2025) across three funding
phases, with the first two concentrating on university hospitals. During the conceptual
phase (now concluded), a central supporting project ensured coordination – and laid
the ground for standardised solutions for all the initiative’s sites and scientific
consortia that will enable effective data use and exchange, both for health care as
well as research. The conceptual phase focused on the following: a) interoperability,
through the consistent use of international standards (from an early stage, i.e. primary
IT systems in patient care); b) standardised templates for patient consent and harmonised
data protection; and c) standard rules for data use and access (monitoring and safeguarding
access to data). On this basis, the initiative aims in the long term to improve medical
research (particularly health care research, using data from treatments), to accelerate
the transfer of knowledge from research to patient care – and to provide important
impetus for the digitalization of medicine in Germany.
Keywords
Medical informatics - data integration - secondary use of clinical data - data integration
- research data infrastructure - interoperability - patient consent - data sharing
- national coordination
