Integrative data management at the Kiel Medical Faculty (INTERLINK)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Andre Franke; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Lieb
• Subject Area: Medical Informatics and Medical Bioinformatics
• Term: since 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317116227

The aim of the project is to establish a uniform data and information flow across different institutions and data management structures. Central research data management is a key topic at the Kiel campus and includes major cooperation projects with the P2N biobank network, the DFG Sequencing Center CCGA and the HiGHmed Medical Informatics initiative.In order to provide researchers with efficient and up-to-date access to research data, a data warehouse for research and a web portal for submitting applications were set up in the first phase of the project, and other infrastructure elements, such as an external trustee for data consolidation, were set up. Currently, core data sets of the biobank PopGen as well as data from the hospital information system for selected study cohorts have been integrated into the data warehouse to enable an evaluation of the workflow and the platforms. A new patient consent form in health care enables that care data can and may be used on a broad basis for research.The challenge now is to standardize the existing databases and data flows and thus achieve a broader integration of data sources into the research infrastructures that have been created. This includes in particular the integration of the created research data management structures into the platform of the HiGHmed initiative. Uniform information on the structure and type of existing data should make it possible to expand the application portal and to record the data required for research projects in a structured form. This is intended to support data output through automated processes and thus make it faster and more efficient. Prompt access to current research data is particularly important in medical research.In addition to the implementation of standardized data export and import pipelines for data from the hospital information system and the biobank network P2N, a central ID management for biosamples and OMICS data is to be developed as well as a consolidation of the raw data management of OMICS data.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Björn Bergh