“From the community for the community” was the motto of this year’s Convention of the University Medicine Network held in Berlin, which attracted great interest: 500 participants had registered, and more than 200 additional ones were on a waiting list. For two exciting days, the focus of the event was on input from the infrastructures and exchange among the participants.
On the first day of the NUM Convention, NATON contributed to two sessions: Together with AKTIN and RACOON, the registry team presented in the “Workshop on the Health Data Utilization Act (GDNG): Initial experiences from three NUM infrastructure projects and preliminary results of the TMF interoperability initiative,” outlining the current status and implementation of the law’s application.
The subsequent session on “Monitoring and Surveillance – Backbone for a Learning Health Research System” featured NATON in collaboration with the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), as well as participants from the NUM projects GenSurv, PREPARED, and NUM-RDP Dashboard, which are looking to join forces for the next funding period under the infrastructure NUM-SAR (Surveillance and Rapid Response). In his presentation, NATON coordinator Prof. Dr. Benjamin Ondruschka (UKE) discussed the responsibilities that the autopsy network has already taken on for pandemic preparedness and management in the past, as well as the responsibilities it can and aims to adopt in future pandemic situations. The subsequent panel discussion included experts such as Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten (Charité) and Dr. Ute Rexroth (RKI), and touched on potential connections and collaboration opportunities among the projects and institutions. The networking meeting and quarterly meeting of the NATON community concluded the second day of the convention. Exciting presentations from the NATON research projects represented all three fields of the autopsy network: Prof. Dr. Bruno Märkl (UK Augsburg) spoke for the discipline of pathology, Fabian Heinrich (UKE Hamburg) represented legal medicine, and PD Dr. Susanne Krasemann (UKE Hamburg) and Dr. Helena Radbruch (Charité) gave a joint presentation representing the field of neuropathology.
We would like to thank all participants and the NUM Coordination team for yet another outstanding NUM Convention!
