Regional Center for Digital Medicine

There was a competition, there is a check, there will be a project. The Medical University, the University Clinical Hospital in Wroclaw and the University of Economics have received a special grant of nearly PLN 30 million. Symbolic checks were handed over by the President of the Medical Research Agency, Dr. Radoslaw Sierpinski, and the Deputy Minister of Health, Marcin Martyniak.The funds will enable the implementation of activities for the digitization of clinical research through the use of patients' health data.

The goal of the Regional Center for Digital Medicine (RCMC), as it is referred to, is to create a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure that will enable the integration of medical data, improve the quality and availability of health services, and develop research and innovation in the field of digital medicine.

We are opening a completely new stage in the implementation of scientific projects in Poland," stressed UMW rector Prof. Piotr Ponikowski. - We are well prepared for this at the Medical University of Wroclaw. This is part of a strategy that has been consistently implemented in recent years. We have established a biobank, which was the first in Poland to receive accreditation. For the past two years, we have run the HeartBIT project together with the Wroclaw University of Economics, where we searched with big data specialists for a common language in understanding data. These experiences resulted in the best rated project in Poland in the Medical Research Agency competition. Our project relies on interdisciplinarity and takes advantage of the potential offered by the University Clinical Hospital in Wroclaw. Moreover, it gives the hospital a chance to make better use of the data it already has. We focus on rare diseases and cardiology with an emphasis on heart failure. In the first aspect, we want to identify diagnostic areas that can be improved with innovative analytical methods to get a clear picture from a variety of data. In the case of cardiology, our goal will be to precisely personalize therapy and identify patients requiring urgent intervention. Both models will be supported by the areas of pathomorphology, radiology and biobanking," explained Prof. Piotr Ponikowski.

 - The project of the Regional Center for Digital Medicine demonstrates the practical dimension of cooperation of many units with one goal - to support the development of science, research, which will have a positive impact on patients. We live in a world of data and information, and this information is especially important in the field of medicine. There is no progress without good research and accurate results. Gathering data from many entities in one place is a big step, but even more interesting is the use of this data, in the development of technologies related to artificial intelligence," adds Marcin Drozd, director of the University Clinical Hospital.
  
As part of the RCMC, data will be collected from several sources, including the information system of the Clinical Research Support Center of the Medical University of Wroclaw, the hospital system of the UMW collaborating University Clinical Hospital, the information system of the UMW Biobank, as well as many others, such as the regional and national network of scientific cooperation in the field of cardiology and rare diseases, including congenital metabolic disorders and type I diabetes, as well as data from medical equipment used at the hospital and in academic units.