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DIM.Ruhr

Data competence centre for the interprofessional use of health data in the Ruhr metropolis

Project overview

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 - they focus on inpatient care. Data-based research into outpatient care has so far received little attention. Despite existing initiatives, the German Science Council (German Science And Humanities Council 2022) also identified a clear implementation and competence deficit in the handling of health data. The project "DIM.RUHR: Data Competence Centre for the Interprofessional Use of Health Data 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. The guiding principles of the project include the development of interprofessional teaching/learning modules, the promotion of research and networking in outpatient care structures and the expansion of data diversity in health care research.

The project opens up the Ruhr innovation area for the target group of health data researchers, particularly in the healthcare professions, along three main objectives:

Grafik zum Projekt DIM.Ruhr

Further information

  • Duration: 11/2023- 10/2026 (conception phase from 01/12/2022 to 30/04/2023)
  • Funding:The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the reference 16DKZ1008 and financed by the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
  • Responsible: Institute of General Practice and Primary Care (iamag), Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Services Research (IZVF), Chair of Health Care Research Institute for Integrative Health Care and Health Promotion (IGVF), Chair of Didactics and Educational Research in Health Science, Chair of Health Informatics, Centre for Digital Innovation and Transformation in Health Science (ZDITG)
  • Project partners: Ruhr University Bochum, Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering, Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences
  • News: Medical data in the digital age: DIM.RUHR focuses on promoting expertise
    News: Interdisciplinary use of health data
Logo mit Schriftzug "Gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung und finanziert von der Europäischen Union

Project goals

  • The teaching objective pursues the development of teaching and learning modules for health data skills, which are to be made available to various target groups on an interprofessional basis. The aim is to improve the quality of data generation, storage, processing and utilisation. Curricular micro-degrees for various health research professions are being developed with a particular focus on the needs of people in outpatient care.
  • The aim of Research is to encourage young scientists in particular to conduct more research in the field of data science. The focus will be on questions of data donation and consent, research and data ethics, data quality and data diversity (bias effects). The implementation of an experimental space will create a level of networking between research, care and practice in which data-generating systems and work with existing data sets can be trialled.
  • The networking objective aims to develop structures for research data management. A joint health data repository is to be set up with the participating universities. In addition, DIM.RUHR aims to set up a workshop programme to facilitate regional and supra-regional networking.

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fraunhofer ISST and the University of Health will work 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.

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