As Chief Scientific Information Officer, Professor Dr Johanna Apfel-Starke advises the MHH Executive Board on strategic IT topics in research and teaching.
Professor Dr Johanna Apfel-Starke is the interface between research, IT and the MHH Executive Board. Copyright: Karin Kaiser / MHH
Digitalisation in medical research is progressing inexorably. Collecting, organising, storing, verifiably publishing and reusing the flood of data in a structured manner is possible with the help of intelligent research data management. This is all the more important at the MHH, as the translational approach ‘from bench to bedside - and back’ - i.e. bringing clinically relevant research results into patient care and bringing questions from patient care to research - is an essential component of research, teaching and patient care. The ‘IT Research and Teaching’ staff unit was set up six months ago in order to meet the diverse requirements for handling data, to bundle these, to find synergies and to be well positioned for the future as MHH. It is headed by Professor Dr Johanna Apfel-Starke. She describes her role as Chief Scientific Information Officer (CSIO) as follows: ‘I am, so to speak, the interface between research, IT and the Executive Board.’
As CSIO, Professor Apfel-Starke advises the Executive Board on strategic IT topics in research and teaching and ensures that research and IT are networked effectively. She benefits from her own professional background. ‘As a biochemist by training, I know the work and perspective of researchers, and my additional Master's degree in Medical Information Management brings me close to IT,’ she explains. Since 2018, she has regularly supervised courses, internships and theses at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where she was appointed Professor of Medical Informatics Studies in mid-December 2023. This enables her to combine research, IT and teaching and transfer them to medical training, while also reflecting current medical informatics topics back to MHH.
IT is given equal consideration at the MHH
‘Fortunately, IT is no longer a peripheral issue, but is always given equal consideration at MHH,’ says Professor Apfel-Starke. In order to obtain research results more quickly, MHH has expanded its High Performance Computer Cluster (HPC), for example. An HPC is a powerful computer system that performs complex calculations at high speed by using many servers simultaneously. ‘This cluster is available to all MHH researchers and is continuously managed and further developed,’ emphasises the CSIO. The fact that high-performance scientific computing is becoming increasingly important is also demonstrated by the many research groups that also want to access the resources across universities. ‘These requirements must be taken into account without leaving the scope of IT security. This is why the HPC is a central resource that is integrated into the MHH IT ecosystem.’
Standardised code is important for international projects
An important prerequisite for such smooth electronic communication is that the systems used are interoperable, i.e. speak the same language, so to speak. This includes harmonised data coding, for example with the international nomenclature SNOMED (Systematised Nomenclature of Human and Veterinary Medicine). Unlike the globally recognised code for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), this not only ensures the standardised naming of medical diagnoses, but also maps medical terms and relates them to each other. ‘In Spain, SNOMED has long been the standard coding system in medical research, but Germany is unfortunately lagging somewhat behind,’ says Professor Apfel-Starke. ‘Standardised coding in SNOMED is becoming increasingly important for participation in international projects, which is why we need to catch up here and consolidate the progress made in individual projects.’
Data from patient care will also be incorporated into the research. ‘Unlike data from clinical studies, this so-called real world data offers representative and realistic insights into healthcare,’ explains Professor Apfel-Starke. ‘They obtain their information from a variety of sources such as medical registers, electronic patient records, health insurance billing data and, in some projects, from patients' mobile devices. ’The Medical Informatics Initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research has created the ‘Health Research Data Platform’ for this data from everyday healthcare, which also includes research data from MHH. ‘The MHH is also one of only a few university hospitals in Germany to have adopted the international OHDSI OMOP data model, which facilitates the design and execution of analyses based on standardised empirical patient data,’ says Professor Apfel-Starke.
Fascinating diversity
With her specialist focus on interoperability and data management, Professor Apfel-Starke places the requirements of research and teaching in the context of current developments in IT - including in the areas of patient care, administration and international projects. Her responsibilities range from heading the Research and Teaching IT Advisory Board, updating a digital strategy for research and teaching, to classic management to determine and assess the IT requirements of these areas at MHH, to working in national committees and preparing projects with an impact on the entire MHH. ‘The fascinating thing about my work is the variety,’ enthuses the CSIO.
‘Due to the different specialist areas and interdisciplinary teams, every project is new and unique and comes with a wide variety of requirements - be it in terms of processes, infrastructure or methodology.’ The challenge is to see these requirements in the overall picture of MHH and to consider the current and future processes in patient care with every innovation - a task that Professor Apfel-Starke is happy to take on.
Long tradition
Medical informatics has long been an important topic at the MHH. The Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics (PLRI), a joint institute with the Technical University of Braunschweig and one of the first in Germany, has been in existence since 1974. The institute is named after one of the founding fathers of medical informatics, Peter L. Reichertz, who taught at the MHH from 1969 to 1987. The PLRI works on medical informatics topics at the MHH and, as the non-clinical institution with the most third-party funding, is heavily involved in all major current funding lines in the field.
Text: Kirsten Pötzke