Focus and Tasks

Data Use in Research and Healthcare

All university hospitals in Germany operate Data Integration Centers (DIC), which act as an interface between clinical care and scientific research. They enable better availability of research and healthcare data. In doing so, they promote interoperability and expand the possibilities for secondary use in biomedical research – both locally and multi-centrally.

The DIC Jena is part of the Information Technology division and works in close cooperation with other facilities of the UKJ like the Institute für Medical Statistics, Informatics and Data Science, the Integrated Biobank Jena and the Center for Clinical Studies.The DIC was established in 2018 as part of the Medical Informatics Initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Since 2023, we are part of the Network of University Medicine (NUM).

As a multidisciplinary team with expertise in medical data science, data engineering, clinical terminologies, project management and healthcare-related areas, our focus is on the transformation to data-driven processes in German healthcare facilities.

The DIC Jena plays a pivotal role in all endeavors pertaining to the interoperability of clinical data, particularly in projects that are funded by the Hospital Future Act (KHZG) and in preparing for the implementation of the German electronic patient record (ePA) and the integration into the European Health Data Space (EHDS).

Tasks of the DIC

enabling access to healthcare or research data collected or documented at the Jena University Hospital as well as transformation of these data into interoperable formats including semantic annotation
enabling new research projects and data use projects, locally or across sites
quality assurance and curation of accessible healthcare data
acquisition of third-party funds for expenses of the DIC through the initiation of and participation in projects,
support of the informed consent of the patient to the use of her or his data, e.g. with the Broad Consent
operation of IT procedures for data exchange and distributed data use with external partners,
e.g. via the German Portal for Medical Research Data
support of data analysis and processing from feasibility studies to clinical decision support
retransfer of analysis results into the clinical primary documentation and use in general healthcare
consulting on and further development of interoperability standards
consulting on the integration of IT processes and IT infrastructure in UKJ project proposals funded by third parties
support and training for users of the services of the DIC
cooperation with other Data Integration Centers, research initiatives, and Standards Developing Organizations

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