The joint annual conference of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) e.V. and the Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research (TMF) e.V. took place from August 21 to 25, 2022. The GMDS-TMF annual conference was chaired by Prof. Dr. Björn Bergh (conference president GMDS) and Prof. Dr. Michael Krawczak (conference president TMF). Due to the pandemic situation in Kiel, the conference was once again held 100% virtually, as in 2021. There was also a live studio this year, which was set up in the premises of the Medical Informatics Section at the Hörn Campus Kiel.
The conference was officially opened on Monday morning by Prof. Dr. Bergh, Prof. Dr. Krawczak and Prof. Dr. Björn Schreiweis. This was followed by a welcome address from the President of Kiel University, Prof. Dr. Simone Fulda. This was followed by another greeting from the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Kiel University, Prof. Dr. Joachim Thiery. In addition, the Chairman of the Board of the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Prof. Dr. Jens Scholz, was welcomed to the live studio, who once again emphasized the importance of hospital digitalization. Afterward, we switched to the President of the GMDS, Prof. Dr. Harald Binder, who addressed a virtual greeting to the participants. Finally, there was an outlook on the conference.
In line with the motto “Medicine in transition – more precise, more integrative, more sustainable”, the conference focused on the topics of digitalization, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. In the 23 lecture sessions and 3 tutorials from the fields of medical informatics, biometrics/statistics, epidemiology and public health, there was an intensive exchange between the almost 500 participants. A total of 98 submitted contributions from a wide range of topics were presented in the lecture sessions as well as in the ePoster section and the networking area.
Particularly topical issues of broad interest were presented in the form of keynote speeches. First, Prof. Dr. Michael Höhle (Stockholm University, Sweden) provided insights with his keynote address, which dealt with the influence of statistical uncertainties in deviations from time series data in algorithm-based approaches. On Tuesday, Dr. Demetris Avraam (Newcastle University, UK) spoke about data privacy in data sharing and analysis in medical research. There were also two panels on Tuesday with various experts on the topics of health data architecture for care and research and data protection and medical research.
Wednesday continued with two keynotes: Dr. Teresa Zayas Cabán (National Institutes of Health, Maryland, USA) spoke about interoperability in healthcare and research and Dr. Marianna Cortese (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA) spoke about the role of Epstein-Barr virus in multiple sclerosis. Dr. Rolf Apweiler (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK) spoke on Thursday about the various partnerships of the EMBL-EBI to support research. In the accompanying live talks, the conference presidents and other guests discussed the content of the presentations in greater depth.
On Thursday afternoon, the conference came to a successful conclusion with a summary by Prof. Dr. Bergh, Prof. Dr. Krawczak, Prof. Dr. Schreiweis, and the final musical contribution by Yonatan Pandelaki.
The organizers would like to thank all the experts for the great insights into their fields of research. The reference to current international health policy issues once again impressively underlined the relevance of GMDS and TMF topics for medicine in Germany.
