Successful Collaboration Between RWTH, Uniklinik and Bayer AG

On the occasion of its five-year anniversary, in October, the Joint Research Center für Computational Biomedicine hosted an international workshop in Aachen, which also marked the start of a period of expansion.

 

The Joint Research Center for Computational Biomedicine, JRC for short, has been established as the first public-private partnership nationally in the field of systems biomedicine. In October 2018, on the occasion of its five-year anniversary, the JRC, which is jointly operated by Bayer AG, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, and RWTH Aachen University, hosted a workshop on the topic of “Phase Transitions in Living Systems.”

The workshop aimed at further promoting the interdisciplinary exchange in the fields of advanced data analysis, data-driven modeling, and the computational sciences for applications in biomedicine. Furthermore, the workshop marked the next phase of the joint project, which will see an expansion of the JRC to include research at all levels and across scales, ranging from the molecular level to the patient.

The largest project to which the JRC contributes is SMITH – Smart Medical Information Technology for Healthcare. The medical informatics initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) promotes a modern digital medicine to benefit patients, seeking to establish new IT solutions for cross-institutional connectedness and the effective interlinkage of data from healthcare and medical research.

The medical informatics initiative seeks to make it possible for practitioners to view all relevant research results and empirical data at the click of a button, ranging from x-ray images through genome analysis results. The instant availability of relevant information is highly effective in supporting the treatment decision process.

The SMITH consortium, which receives funding in the amount of 35 million euros, consists of 14 partners from research and industry. Out of this budget, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen and RWTH Aachen University receive 10 million euros in funding.