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Changing the way we understand healthcare and medicine

An expert discussion about the European EHR4CR-project and the future of clinical research in Europe.

January 2012. “The present agenda focuses on the prospective study model. It assumes that we want to find a recruitment pool of patients and from that a group of hundreds, maximum thousands, we want to study and identify the effectiveness and safety of new medicines. But the ability to actually study millions alters the landscape.” Prof. Dipak Kalra

“I'm not saying that what we're creating is the medical equivalent of Google – but we hope it will have those unanticipated benefits.” Peter Singleton

Europeans Jointly Promote Future Use of Data from Electronic Health Records for Research

TMF workshop on ethical and legal aspects of cross-border secondary use of treatment data

January 12, 2012. Up to 2014, within the scope of the European project "Electronic Health Records for Clinical Research" (EHR4CR), partners from academic research and industry will be jointly establishing a Europe-wide technology platform that aims to allow secondary use of data from electronic health records for the purpose of clinical research. Today and tomorrow, lawyers, ethics specialists, and data protection experts from various EU member states are discussing in Berlin what legal and ethical issues will have to be addressed. The workshop is being organized by TMF, which – due to its extensive preliminary work on data protection and ethical issues of networked medical research – in this project is leading a work package dealing with the topic of data protection and data security.

From a Community of Predators to a Community Sharing a Common Vision

Medical research networks need a strong identity to be able to work successfully

December 15, 2011. Common goals and a clear mission are the key factors determining the success of any organization – and any medical research network. However, what may sound banal is highly relevant for motivating people to cooperate and for the impact of the network on the outside world. This became clear at a workshop on the topic of "Internal Communication in Medical Research Networks", which TMF held in Berlin on December 12, 2011.

Even Superman Would Work in a Network

Better research on a joint basis: TMF School starts with 24 medical network researchers

November 30, 2011. The notion of the lone scientist in the laboratory has been completely inaccurate for a long time now. That was agreed by the 24 junior network researchers who participated in the first TMF School session on November 24 and 25, 2011. Many good ideas only became accepted when the right partners had been taken on board. "We can assume that nowadays even Superman would work in a network," says Prof. Dr. Frank Ückert (University of Mainz), who, on behalf of the board of trustees of the TMF School, welcomed the participants to Schloss Rauischholzhausen, a stately home and the conference hotel of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen.

German Biobank Registry Wins Poster Prize

First meeting of ESBB in Marseille: registry visibility enhanced outside Germany

November 29, 2011. The constituent meeting of the European, Middle Eastern & African Society for Biopreservation & Biobanking (ESBB), which took place in Marseille, France, from November 16 to 19, 2011, provided an ideal platform to also make the German Biobank Registry known to European specialist colleagues outside the German community. The TMF poster concerning the registry was awarded first prize out of 66 presentations in the category "Management of biobanking networks".

High Quality and Maximum Automation

TMF biobanking working group visits KI Biobank in Stockholm

November 2, 2011. About 1.5 million samples are stored in the biobank at Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm, which is currently being used as the basis for around 70 studies. During their visit to the biobank on October 26, 2010, members of the TMF biobanking working group were able to gain an impression of the high quality and level of automation for the processes of sample sorting, processing and storage. The next objectives for enhancing the KI Biobank are the automation of sample transmittal, development of a national network and participation of further studies. The Swedish and German researchers plan to continue the exchange.

"Making Results of Clinical Studies Comparable"

Interview with Prof. Dr. Markus Löffler on the reasons for and objectives of the BMBF-funded project to develop a national metadata repository in Germany.

Concentrating on People's Needs

TELEMED 2011 focuses on the forward-looking topics of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and Health Apps

October 19, 2011. Telemedicine, in conjunction with intelligent facility services and smartphone apps, can improve the quality of life for patients and elderly persons and at the same time cut costs in the healthcare sector. That became clear at TELEMED 2011, which took place at the TMF conference center in Berlin on October 19 under the banner "Telemedicine in the home setting – perspectives for IT-based services at the 3rd health location". However, widespread use of such systems is obstructed not only by a lack of technical standards but also by still unresolved liability issues and, in some cases, excessive costs.

Festivals, Markets, and Avian Influenza: One Health Concept Calls for Interdisciplinary Cooperation

350 participants at the National Symposium for Zoonosis Research in Berlin

October 10, 2011. One world, one health: Human health and animal health are closely interwoven. If the "One Health" concept is to be taken seriously, the findings of human medicine and veterinary medicine must be supplemented with further scientific observation methods. For instance, socio-economic and anthropological factors, inter alia, play a role if traditional pharmaceutical forms or customs contribute to the spread of infectious diseases. Examples were presented by Dr. Stephane de la Rocque (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome) and Prof. Dr. Dirk Pfeiffer (Royal Veterinary College, London), the two keynote speakers at the National Symposium for Zoonosis Research, which took place in Berlin on October 6 and 7, 2011, and was attended by 350 participants.

Devoting More Attention to Methodological Issues in Medical Research

Joint annual conference of GMDS and DGEpi in Mainz brings together 1,100 medical information specialists, biometricians, epidemiologists, and documentalists

October 7, 2011. When planning and carrying out studies and publishing the results even more attention must be devoted to methodological aspects than has been the case to date. This was emphasized by keynote speaker Doug Altman from the University of Oxford at the joint annual conference of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) and the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi), which took place in Mainz from September 26 to 29, 2011. TMF was represented in the content program, in the exhibition area, and in the further training courses offered by the conference.

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