Our project and our vision

Due to increasing digitization in medicine, more and more data is becoming available, for example in electronic patient files, through laboratory analyzes or in treatment guidelines. One challenge is to make the knowledge contained in these very different types of data available and usable at the treatment site for specific individual therapy decisions. Existing clinical information systems make it possible to collect and store important information, but usually in a relatively unstructured manner and without an individual, context-related compilation of the facts relevant to a treatment decision. The aim of the graduate school is to train young researchers from the fields of medical informatics, computer science, statistics, epidemiology and psychology so that they receive a holistic overview of the current state of research on knowledge- and data-based personalization of medical decision-making processes and design new interdisciplinary methods and prototype them learn to implement using the example of malignant melanoma. For this purpose, methods from the fields of information extraction, knowledge representation with machine learning methods and insights into user interaction at the point of care (PoC) are combined in a novel way. Through interdisciplinary measures, in particular through shadowing in the dermatology clinic, barriers of understanding between the disciplines are broken down. The cross-institutional cooperation between the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences, the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Essen University Medical Center is unique for a graduate college. The applicants together represent a broad range of expertise in the fields of medical informatics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, artificial intelligence, psychology, radiology and melanoma research. Graduates of our program will be able to take on leading roles in the digitization process of the healthcare system and to further improve treatment methods with the help of artificial intelligence methods, taking into account the direct feedback and experience of the treating physicians.